


cobalt as the midnight sky

by fairwinds09



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Artist AU, Edwardian Period, F/M, S-bend corsets are truly evil, Scott as an impoverished artist, Socialite Tessa, the course of true love never did run smooth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22044676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/pseuds/fairwinds09
Summary: In which Scott is a brilliant young Scottish painter and Tessa wants her portrait done.(The corsets, obligatory garret, and flaming love affair you get for free.)
Relationships: Scott Moir/Tessa Virtue
Comments: 59
Kudos: 144





	1. an endless metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

> Well. I am...back? Nearly a year later, and I'm back writing for this fandom. Needless to say, a lot has changed. 
> 
> First, I should note that I am so grateful that this writing community has decided to stick around. We fell in love with real people and their complicated and tumultuous story, and then we built on that to create fictional worlds that went far beyond RPF. Even though I've been out of the game for a while, I have been reading the work of this fandom with avid interest and appreciation, and I am thankful to still be able to contribute just a little. Thank you so much to all of you who have continued to write beautiful love stories based on these characters - you are all an inspiration. 
> 
> Second, I hope you enjoy this story. Since it's me, it'll probably come in fits and starts and get abandoned for a couple of months and then get picked back up and then who knows what will happen. I know where I want it to go, at least. 
> 
> Just a bit of background...this is set in 1901, at the beginning of the Edwardian period, during what is often called La Belle Époque. It was a lush, beautiful, idealistic era, one that died an abrupt and bloody death in the trenches of World War I. I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to be historically accurate when and where I can. If I have made an egregious error, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it. 
> 
> Last, the title is taken from Marge Piercy's "Colors passing through us," which can be found [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47398/colors-passing-through-us). I strongly recommend you read it along with this first chapter. Chapter title is taken from the last line of Amos Russell Wells' "Green."

She is so _bored_. 

Tessa leans against an armchair, disregarding all her governess’s careful instructions that _ladies do not lean in public, Miss Virtue, it gives off the impression of slovenliness_ , and sips slowly from the champagne flute held between two gloved fingers. Somebody brought it to her a few minutes ago...a navy officer or an ambassador’s aide or someone vaguely important but not important enough for her to remember. She’s quite sure that she smiled pleasantly and murmured _thank you_ with just enough huskiness to her voice to make the young man blush and stammer a bit, dipped her lashes just so and contrived to produce an air of worldly innocence that would have pleased His Majesty himself, were that august personage in attendance. 

It doesn’t matter who it was, the reaction would have been the same. The reaction is always the same. The smile, the glint of interest in his eyes, the offer to dance. If she accepted the offer, the tedious circuit around the ballroom while the exact same conversational topics were bandied about - the weather, the latest play at the Delphi or the Apollo or the Globe, the symphony concert two nights before, and (if the gentlemen were of a political bent), whether or not the French colonial issue was going to make travel up and down the Nile difficult during the summer. She would then be asked for another dance, and another, and after the third dance, the odds would increase exponentially that the gentleman would then beg to whisk her away to the conservatory. Under cover of its warm, humid darkness, he would then endeavour to steal a kiss, and if allowed such a liberty, would proceed to become more and more familiar until she had to decide whether or not she could risk being found with a hand up her skirt next to the Duchess of Marlborough’s prized orange bushes. 

She sighs. It’s all so deadly _dull_ , she muses, the same gentlemen, the same three waltzes at every single ball and soirée, the same kisses, the same ardent fumbling. If she could find one man, just one man in all of London society, who knew how to make her shiver with desire, who would tease and torment her and leave her aching with unspent passion, she swears to herself that she’d fall at his feet in paroxysms of gratitude. But they’re all so predictable, so ridiculously eager, so tentative, as if the embraces of a viscount’s daughter are some rare and impossibly fragile thing. 

She knows this is ridiculous. She’s heard the gossip at innumerable teas and garden parties. She knows full well that even the supposedly untouched virgins of the peerage are far from innocent, particularly those who, like herself, have made it past 20 without marching to the altar. And yet, here she is, bored to tears, sipping champagne alone, wondering if it’s too early to slip away and call for her father’s carriage and go home. There’s a particularly erotic novel waiting for her under her mattress, hidden from her mother’s prying eyes, and she envisions a long hot bath with lavender oil and the ever-increasing wicked behaviour of the French count, who is currently lying in wait for the innocent yet passionate Mariette with plans to very thoroughly seduce her. Tessa cannot wait. 

Flicking a careful glance to left and right, she drains the champagne flute and slips quietly into a back hallway to find her father’s groom. 

* * *

He digs his thumb into one eye socket, then the other, willing to the colours to subside. 

They do not. 

He rubs both eyes with the heels of his hands, blinks against the resultant shower of sparks, and then opens them again. Nothing has changed. His canvas is still a wash of hazy green. 

He sighs and tilts his head back until he can see his ceiling, which thankfully is _not_ green. It’s the same as always, the dark brown of smoke-stained beams and the warped lighter brown of plaster higher above, interspersed with the dark rectangles of the skylights that are the reason he wanted this tiny, cold apartment in the first place. He shivers and makes a mental note to talk to Mrs. Giroux about the draft again, even though he doesn’t really expect her to do anything about it. Mrs. Giroux is not fond of doing anything for her tenants that involves spending extra money, particularly those tenants poor enough or unfortunate enough to inhabit the three garret rooms. 

Scott is one of those tenants. He has been for three years, ever since he came down on the train from Edinburgh with all his earthly possessions in a single cracked leather suitcase and a stack of canvases held under his arm. He was bound and determined to make it big in the City, to become the next sensation of the London art world. He was young and brilliant and afire with love of Art and Beauty and Truth, and he was absolutely going to make his mark on the universe as a whole. 

Thus far all he’s managed to do is eke out a meagre living painting signs for local merchants and advertisements for the pub down the street, augmented by a few portraits here and there. Despite what he writes in his letters home to his mother, none of the portraits have been of anybody even remotely important - a grocer’s wife, a spoiled young viscount’s mistress, a wine merchant’s mother. It paid the bills, to be sure, let him get a new pair of boots and a coat that wasn’t completely threadbare, but he certainly isn’t seeing his work in the National Gallery. Not at this rate. 

That’s all about to change, though. Slowly, he pulls a calling card out of his back pocket and runs his fingers over the heavy embossed lettering, grinning suddenly as the dim light from his gas lamp glints off the name in the middle: _The Right Honble. The Earl of Strafford_. He still can hardly believe it. James A. Virtue, the Earl of Strafford himself, wants to meet him tomorrow afternoon at his townhouse in St. George’s Square to discuss having his youngest daughter sit for a portrait. 

Earl of Strafford. St. George’s Square. It runs round and round in a loop in his brain, over and over again like a children’s nonsense rhyme. He glances surreptitiously towards his canvas and is relieved to see the hazy green almost entirely gone, orange sparking blithely at the edges instead. He has a commission. An actual _commission_. His mother is going to be so proud. 

Scott sits up straight all of a sudden, though, not letting himself get distracted by the dancing orange. This is tomorrow. He has to be _ready_ , has to make sure that he has samples of his work to show the earl, has to make sure his best (his only) good suit is clean and pressed, and he really probably should clean and shine his shoes, because he tramped through at least two miles of London muck and mire and his good boots won’t even be allowed inside the vestibule of the earl’s townhouse at this rate. 

Underneath it all, though, thrums a delighted anticipation that rises bright and fizzy through him, like bubbles in a glass of good champagne - this is his chance. This is what he’s been waiting and working for, three long years’ worth of barely getting by for this one moment, this single opportunity. He can do it. He knows he can do it. 

He just needs to impress the earl and his daughter, and from then on it’s a piece of cake. 


	2. one perfect rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we gain important background information about our two young star-crossed lovers, and in which we meet Eliza. 
> 
> The latter is far more important than the former, if we're being honest here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your delightful comments, kudos, and Twitter responses! It is lovely to be back in this community that supports and uplifts its writers so well. Hope y'all have had a wonderful New Year thus far. 
> 
> This next chapter, as the summary indicates, is mostly filling in important bits of background information. I promise they're actually going to meet in the next chapter - I'm not going to keep this thing spinning out indefinitely. However, I felt that it was useful to know a bit more about the circumstances surrounding this portrait, and it was particularly important for us to understand why Tessa's so frustrated with her circumstances and Scott's so eager to succeed. And you needed to meet Rose. I love Rose, I really do. 
> 
> The title of this chapter is taken from Dorothy Parker's "One Perfect Rose," which I have included here, as it is fairly short. Even though this was published 25 years after the setting of this story, I feel like Parker and Tessa would have been great friends - both witty, sarcastic, and chafing against the often absurd expectations their society had for women.
>
>>   
> A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.  
> All tenderly his messenger he chose;  
> Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--  
> One perfect rose.
>> 
>> I knew the language of the floweret;  
> "My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."  
> Love long has taken for his amulet  
> One perfect rose.
>> 
>> Why is it no one ever sent me yet  
> One perfect limousine, do you suppose?  
> Ah no, it's always just my luck to get  
> One perfect rose.  
> 

James A. Virtue, the Right Honourable Earl of Strafford, turns out to be far less imposing than Scott had expected. In fact, the earl’s townhouse is more impressive than the man himself, as far as Scott’s concerned - acres of Italian marble and old, dark oil paintings and delicate furniture that looks like it’s antique and French. When he arrives five minutes before his two o’clock appointment, he’s left to wait in the vestibule by an extremely snooty butler who barely deigns to look down his long nose at Scott in his humble day suit and slightly cracked boots. Scott is left feeling distinctly out of place until he’s ushered into the library, where the earl is standing behind a massive oak desk. Scott wonders idly how many footmen it took to move the damn thing into place, and how many of them required medical care for their strained backs afterwards. 

“So, Mr...Moir,” the earl says in a dry voice, not raising his eyes from a sheaf of papers in his hand. “The aspiring artist. How do you do.”

Scott nods politely. “My Lord.” 

The earl raises his eyes, giving Scott a shrewd, penetrating look. He’s not a tall man - medium height at most, with grey hair and a stiff grey mustache. Apparently he doesn’t much care for the luxuriant whiskers many noblemen affect these days. Truly, with his small wire-rimmed spectacles and sober black suit and neatly trimmed mustache, he could be a banker or a lawyer in the City rather than one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in England. 

“I saw your work for Lord Moriston,” the earl says, narrowing his eyes behind his spectacles as he looks Scott up and down. “It was...inspired. Most inspired.”

“Thank you, sir,” Scott murmurs, feeling his cheeks heat a little. He remembers that portrait very well. Flora Harley, Moriston’s beautiful young mistress, had been an actress rising through the ranks at the Delphi when he painted her two years ago. She was lovely - petite, voluptuous, with flowing, curly red hair and a figure that drove men wild with passion. She also had absolutely no shame when it came to displaying that figure, and she and Moriston had both insisted on a nude portrait, a Botticelli’s Venus rising from the waves sort of thing. Scott had, with difficulty, persuaded them that portraying Miss Harley as Venus was not only trite but also thoroughly unimaginative, and had managed to convince them that having Flora rising from her bath was an erotic yet somehow domestic touch. 

The result, he must admit, is still one of his greatest works yet - Flora caught in the act of standing up in the tub, water falling from her smooth pale limbs and lush curves, steam rising in tendrils round her legs and ankles as she reached out for a towel, with a look of coy innocence on her face, half-turned towards the viewer. It was the quintessential look of a woman who knows extremely well how much she is supposed to pretend not to know, and it was absolutely irresistible. 

But Scott has to assume that whatever style of portrait the earl wants for his youngest daughter, it will not involve anything even remotely close to Flora Harley in the buff.

“What exactly were you...ah...thinking of, my lord?” he asks politely. The nerves are starting to get to him at last; white is seeping around the edges of his vision, and God, he hates it. He tenses his jaw and battles back the misty creeping edges of it as valiantly as he can. 

The earl taps his chin with the edges of his little bundle of papers, stares out the window as if deep in thought. Scott has the uncomfortable feeling that he’s being toyed with, and he rather resents it. 

“Well,” the earl says in those plummy, perfectly modulated tones, “obviously I’d prefer that my daughter not be painted in the bath.”

He quirks an eyebrow at Scott, who nearly gapes before he remembers his manners. Is it even possible that James Virtue, the Earl of Strafford, has a sense of humour? 

“Ah...no, sir. I mean...that is...of course not, sir. My lord, that is. Very...very respectable sort of portrait, naturally.”

The corner of the earl’s mouth twitches delicately, and then his face resumes its placid lines. 

“You’ll have the east sitting room for your work,” he says with preternatural calm. “I’m told the light’s good in there, although I’m no expert myself. My butler, Hargreave, informs me that the situation is ideal, however.”

Scott simply nods, lest he somehow make himself look like _more_ of a babbling idiot. His nerves are still jumping, the white mist at the edges of his vision getting a bit more solid. He curls his left hand into a fist until the nails threaten to break through the skin. The pain always helps him focus.

“Most unfortunately, Lady Strafford and I will be absent during the greater portion of the process. My wife’s aunt has been ill recently, and we quite naturally feel that it is our duty to attend her.”

Scott tilts his head and tries to think of the proper thing to say, which he feels strongly is _not_ “Ah, right, so the old bat must have a good deal of money.” Fortunately the earl preempts this disastrous comment by barreling onward. 

“In our absence, Hargreave will show you about and ensure that you have all the materials necessary. I believe Lady Tessa’s schedule will be cleared for sittings on…” the earl carefully consults his papers “...Thursdays at three o’clock. You will be expected promptly at that time, and your sittings shall last no longer than two hours, given that Lady Tessa generally is engaged for tea by five o’clock.”

Scott nods. He’s so curious about Lady Tessa by this point. He’s seen a few grainy photographs of her in the newspapers, but never anything close enough for him to truly make out her features. As far as he can tell, she’s petite, slim, and dark-haired. That’s all he knows. 

“My lord,” he ventures to ask, “are there any particular aspects of the portrait you would like to specify, other than…” He trails off, because he absolutely cannot say _other than I shouldn’t paint your daughter without any clothes on._ Strafford taps his papers against the edge of his desk, mulling this over. 

“Perhaps a background of something blue,” he says at last. “Lady Tessa looks quite charming in blue. Other than that, I leave all the particulars to your artistic genius.”

Scott bristles a bit at that. He can’t help it - the earl sounds so damn patronising, as if he doesn’t know full well that Scott is completely unknown in the London art scene, as if he doesn’t know that hiring a nobody from Scotland is something of an odd choice for one of the wealthiest men in England. 

The earl smiles a little. “Please, don’t take that as a jab, my dear young man,” he says quietly, which makes Scott’s face flame. He didn’t mean for Strafford to _see_ all of that. “I really do think you have a great deal of artistic merit. Your portrait of Miss Harley was brilliant, but I’ve seen other samples of your work as well. Mr. Chatham’s mother was quite, quite well done.”

He’s seen _that_ portrait?! Scott’s eyes go very round. 

“Yes,” the earl says smoothly, “I’ve made quite a study of your body of work, you know. Not so much the advertisements and things, I must confess, but I put Hargreave to work finding whatever portraits of yours he could, and he has been most resourceful. Most resourceful. I must say that the Chatham portrait really might be my favourite, you know - not quite _Whistler’s Mother_ , you know, but that will come with time.”

Suddenly the room is awash in blue, dark rich blue, and Scott rocks back on his heels a little with the onslaught of it. This man didn’t hire him because it was cheap, or because he felt sorry for a Scottish nobody with hardly a penny to his name. The earl actually thinks he can do this. The earl thinks he has _talent_. 

While he’s busy blinking at the blue haze, the earl seems to have reached a decision. 

“So, Mr. Moir, I am prepared to offer you two hundred pounds to paint a portrait of my daughter by the end of November. That is nearly three months from now. I assume you can complete the painting in the requisite amount of time?”

He can’t breathe. 

“Two hundred?” Scott manages to wheeze. “ _Two hundred pounds?_ ” 

The earl’s brows furrow. 

“Do you not find the sum sufficient, Mr. Moir?”

Sufficient. _Sufficient_. That’s enough money to pay his rent for years. That’s enough that he can invest in a whole supply of new paints, and canvas, and pay back the two pounds he’s owed Chiddy for months now. It’s enough that he can send some home to his mother, pay for a train ticket to Edinburgh to visit her for the first time in three years. He could weep with joy. 

“No, no, sir...I mean, my lord, that is...that is quite sufficient,” he says as calmly as he can, trying to keep his voice from trembling with joy. “I’ll have it done in three months’ time.”

“Excellent,” Strafford says. “Hargreave will give you twenty pounds in advance on Thursday when you arrive for your first sitting, to cover such expenses as you may deem necessary for the work, and then you will be compensated with a small weekly sum for travel and supplies and so forth. The remainder of the two hundred pounds will be paid to you after the portrait is finished. Do you find those terms agreeable?”

Scott swallows hard. _Two hundred pounds_. He had never hoped for such a sum. 

“Yes, my lord, they are more than agreeable.”

Strafford’s mouth twitches again and then subsides. 

“Very well then,” he says, returning his gaze to his bundle of papers. “Hargreave will expect you on Thursday afternoon. Good day, Mr. Moir.”

Scott bows, assuming that this is his cue to take his leave. He’s almost to the door when the earl speaks up again. 

“Mr. Moir?”

“My lord?” He’s terrified the earl is about to take it all back, say that it’s been a giant misunderstanding and he’s just been having Scott on the entire time. 

“I did say that I would leave the particulars to your artistic genius, but do please abstain from the gratuitous use of towels in this work, would you?”

Scott chokes and begins to cough painfully. Did the earl just imply...did he really just…

He is saved from further coughing fits by the earl touching the bell on the corner of his desk and the imperturbable Hargreave arriving to escort him out. Hargreave looks extremely unimpressed with Scott’s general existence, which is somehow rather bracing in current circumstances. 

“Thursday at 2:50 on the dot,” Hargreave says when they reach the vestibule. Scott nods, and Hargreave reaches into some sort of pocket hidden in his perfectly tailored uniform. He hands Scott a five pound note. 

“But I...the earl said I wasn’t to…”

Hargreave casts a look of deepest loathing at Scott’s footwear, and then glances at the five pound note. 

“You cannot appear in this house again in _those_ ,” he says, with a wave of his hand at Scott’s slightly cracked but perfectly clean and serviceable boots. “I forbid it.”

While Scott is only beginning to sputter over the sheer nerve of the man, Hargreave is opening the door. 

“Thursday. 2:50 PM. Do not be late.”

And then he’s out on the front stoop with his case in one hand, a five pound note in the other, his dignity a bit bruised, and a wild, surging hope in his chest. 

This is his chance. More than ever, he knows this is his chance. All he has to do now is take it. 

* * *

  
“This cannot be good for my health.”

Eliza grunts, tugging hard at the center set of laces. Tessa coughs, dramatically. 

“The pamphlet said…” another grunt, another tug, “...it _said_ that these were better than the old sort. More…” grunt, tug, “support for the...mmmph...the viscera.”

Tessa wrinkles her nose. “That sound thoroughly disgusting.”

Eliza gives one final grunt of supreme effort and then jerks the laces into a tight knot. Tessa takes an experimental breath and discovers that at 25 ½ inches she can still mostly inhale. But then again, Eliza hasn’t gotten to the top bit just yet. 

“They did a whole study. With doctors and the like. They said it’s better for your posture and your breathing and your kidneys, so hush with all your complaining, _my lady_.”

Tessa glares over her shoulder. Eliza has been her nursery maid and then her lady's maid since she was all of two years old. She has dressed Tessa, fed her, bathed her, chastised her, and loved her for the better part of nineteen years, and she invariably calls her mistress “Miss Tessa” unless she’s being saucy. Any reference to _my lady_ in Tessa’s presence is simply cheek. 

“Have any of these doctors tried not breathing for hours on end because their waists were compressed into an unnatural circumference designed to make men see them as sexually desirable?”

Eliza gasps and yanks on the top set of laces. 

“The _mouth_ on you,” she says with deep disapproval. “Sayin’ such a word. And no, I don’t imagine any of the doctors are overmuch concerned with other men finding them desirable. Now hold still.”

Tessa glances down at her corseted front. “You know, the purpose of these things is to make me look like I have curves,” she points out. “But my bust is still as tiny as ever.”

Eliza grunts again. “That’s why the Good Lord invented padding.”

“Sweet suffering Jesus,” Tessa huffs, and winces when Eliza whacks her shoulder blade with the corset strings. “What exactly is the point of attracting a man with a figure that is 75% corset strings while the rest is comprised of cotton batting? Eventually the reality of the situation is going to sink in.”

Eliza gives one last vicious tug and then sighs in triumph. Tessa takes another experimental breath and decides that her kidneys have probably taken up residence somewhere next to her left lung. 

“The point is,” Eliza says, dusting off her hands, “that the reality doesn’t sink in until _after_ the vows are said.”

Tessa rubs one ankle experimentally against her leg to see if she can scratch the itch on her left calf. It really doesn’t help very much. 

“Ruining my beliefs in true love once again, Eliza.”

Her lady’s maid snorts loudly. “I know what sorts of novels you ’ide under your mattress, Miss Tessa. None of ’em have much to do with true love.”

Tessa’s reply is forestalled by Eliza dropping a thick cloud of pink silk over her head. Once the dress is free of her mouth, she blows out a long breath, or at least as long as her corset will allow. 

“I beg your pardon,” she says, obediently sticking her arms through the sleeves when Eliza pokes her. “I would argue that the Duke has very passionate feelings towards Mariette at the moment. Quite...sincere feelings. Mostly about having her up against a wall.”

Eliza snorts again. “I’m not arguin’ as he has passionate feelings,” she says as she kneels on the floor to yank up the first of five petticoats. “Do ’old that dress up, Miss Tessa, there’s a good girl. I’m merely sayin’ that there’s a great deal more to love than some French la-di-da finding ’is way up some girl’s skirt. There’s honour to think of, and security, and a home - ”

“And whether or not the gentleman is in Debrett’s, and if he has a steady income of over £3,000 per year, and if he has investments but not in anything that Mama will disapprove of as being vulgar, and - ”

“And whether or not _you_ have a place in this world.” Eliza ties off the last of the petticoats and reaches up for the hem of the dress Tessa is holding, pulling it down over the voluminous flounces and ruffles. “Ah, there, don’t you just look a treat.”

Tessa rolls her eyes. “A tidy little bon-bon, all ready for some nice eligible gentleman to gobble me up,” she mocks. Eliza shoots her a dirty look and pushes up from the floor, groaning as her knees straighten. 

“Oufff, my bones don’t do that ’ard floor like they used to,” she complains, heading for the jewellery box on the mahogany dresser. “Now, pet, d’you want the pearl drops or the little silver dangles that Miss Jordan gave you last Christmas?”

Tessa’s trying to decide when there’s a tap at the door and a small, fair-haired maid with a slightly pinched face slips in. 

“My lady,” she says with a perfunctory curtsey, “William wished me to tell you that he’ll have the carriage round in twenty minutes to go to Lady Moffat’s, and Mr. Hargreave says please to go to the library and speak to milord about sitting for your portrait before you leave.”

Eliza holds up the pearl drops and tilts her head to one side, clearly envisioning how they complement the pink silk. 

“Did ’e meet with the new portrait painter, then, Meggy?” she asks in a disinterested tone. 

“Oh aye, so he did.” Meggy’s thin face flushes just a bit, making her look slightly more animated than usual. “He’s quite young, the new painter is.”

Tessa’s eyebrows fly up. “Young?” She’d been envisioning the usual sort of portrait painter - mid-sixties, with heavy mutton-chop side whiskers and an avuncular expression, who keeps asking her about her beaux in a distracted but kind fashion. But he’s _young?_

“Young and quite handsome, miss,” Meggy reports with glee. “I saw him as Mr. Hargreave was escortin’ him to the door, and oooh, he was a sight for sore eyes, so he was. Dark brown hair and hazel eyes and a nice build to him, if I do say.”

Eliza frowns fiercely. “You’ve no business commenting on his build, girl. Do keep a civil tongue your ’ead, hmm?”

Meggy tries to look abashed and fails utterly. 

“How tall is he?” Tessa asks, ignoring Eliza’s huff of exasperation. 

“Oh, not so tall as Mr. Hargreave, but tall enough...maybe five or six inches above you, miss? Handsome young fellow with a broad set to his shoulders, like, and such a twinkle in his eyes! You would not believe it, miss, and I - ”

Eliza plonks the pearl drops down in Tessa’s hand and rounds on Meggy. 

“First of all, it’s _my lady_ to the likes of you, and second, you’ve absolutely no business gossiping about some painter with the young mistress as if you was a scullery maid on the back stairs. You’ve run your errand, now be off with you.”

Meggy bobs a curtsy, murmurs “Begging your pardon, my lady,” with a little sheepish nod, and promptly disappears downstairs. Eliza looks over at Tessa, her face hardening. 

“Now Miss Tessa,” she says sternly, “don’t you be thinking such things. It’ll do nothing but cause trouble, and you know it.”

Tessa smiles impishly and begins to thread the pearl drops through her ear lobes. 

“Why Eliza,” she coos, “whatever do you mean? I’m merely to have my portrait done, like a nice respectable young lady with a nice respectable husband who will no doubt see me up in oils at the National Gallery and say, ‘But of course! Such a thoroughly reputable and morally upright young woman! I must have her!’”

“Don’t you start,” Eliza warns. “I know that look. I don’t care how young or how handsome this young painter fellow is. You’re not to have anything to do with him.”

Tessa turns to the full-length mirror in the corner and inspects her reflection carefully, from the coils of her pinned-up dark hair to the pink silk that makes her cheeks bloom. She might hate having to wear a corset, but there’s no arguing that the cinched-in waist and slight padding to her bust make her look willowy and desirable. She bites her lip and wonders what the painter would think if she wore this. 

“I think my portrait ought to be daring, Eliza,” she muses, running the tip of her tongue over the spot where her teeth nipped at the tender skin. “Daring and _avante-garde_ and wild. Don’t you?”

“I think you ought to stop sayin’ dirty words in French and get your gloves on, that’s what I think.” Eliza sets her face in a thoroughly virtuous expression and rummages through the top dresser drawer for Tessa’s white afternoon gloves. 

“That’s not the dirtiest word I know in French.”

The drawer shuts with an audible _thump_. 

“Put your gloves on, _my lady_ , and then your father’s waitin’ for you downstairs, and there’s to be no more talk of dirty words in French _or_ any other language.” 

Tessa obeys, smoothing the soft material over her wrists and submitting her hands for Eliza to do up the buttons, but her mind is still whirring. Young and handsome and undoubtedly poor. And an artist. She doesn’t know any young, handsome bohemian artists, but she’s willing to bet that they know what they’re doing in bed...and out of it, come to think. 

“Eliza?”

There’s a muffled _mmmph_ of concentration as Eliza struggles with a button on the left glove. 

“When are my mother and father going to France?”

“Tomorrow,” Eliza says, her tongue sticking out a tiny bit as she wrestles the recalcitrant button into place. “Why?” 

“No reason.” _Perfect_. She could not have timed this better if she’d actually tried.

Both gloves on, hat tied firmly in place, Tessa sails out the door with a plan already beginning to form. He may not be as handsome as Meggy says - in fact, he may be an absolute clod. For all she knows, he’s boring as hell and can’t make conversation with a fence post. But if he’s got a build like _that_ and an eye for beauty...well, suffice it to say that Tessa thinks she can make something out of this. 

She just needs a plan. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things for those interested in stray bits of knowledge:
> 
> \--The sum James Virtue offers Scott would be worth approximately £24,744 in 2020, adjusting for inflation rates. If you consider that many peers had a yearly income of roughly £3,000 - £4,000, this is truly an astronomical sum, especially for a young and unknown artist. 
> 
> \--The S-bend corset really was evil, but somewhat less evil than its predecessor, the curved front corset. Despite the supposed benefits of the S-bend, the fact still remained that women's organs were squished into extremely unnatural positions for significant portions of the day in order to achieve the desired silhouette. If you're interested in diagrams and photos of how the S-bend worked, go [here](https://foundationsrevealed.com/free-articles/180-the-s-bend-in-context). 
> 
> \--The painting for Flora Harley is modeled slightly on Degas' _Woman Leaving Her Bath III_ , which may be found [here](http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_185670/Edgar-Degas/Woman-Leaving-Her-Bath-III). In my mind, however, Scott's style is much more Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood than Degas would ever be. Scott is having absolutely none of this Impressionist nonsense. ;)


	3. in blackbird's wing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott's fascination with colours is explained. He and Tessa meet for the first time, and Tessa has a plan for her next sitting with him. 
> 
> And Poor Chiddy is trying (and failing) to keep the situation under control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all the kudos/comments/Twitter feedback! Y'all truly are the best readers, and I appreciate you more than I can say. 
> 
> Special thanks to only_because3, bucketofrice, and awakeanddreaming for their beta reads of this chapter. Y'all are amazing, and this chapter would be _much_ messier and less cohesive without their brilliant comments and suggestions. 
> 
> And thanks to A, without whom this fic would never have come to be in the first place. 
> 
> Chapter title taken from William Henry Dawson's "Color Effect."
>
>> But the one that really thrills your  
> Heart until you want to sing,  
> Is the red which you discovered,  
> When a boy, in blackbird's wing.  
> 

He is drunk. He is so, _so_ drunk, so drunk that he’s lost count of the beers Chiddy and Eric bought him and the good Scottish whisky he bought for himself with his newfound wealth;, he’s lost count of everything but the colours swirling in his head, in the air, a glorious patina that shimmers over everything. 

“And she’s _beautiful_ ,” he slurs for what has to be the fifteenth time, slinging his arm around Chiddy’s shoulders and leaning his head against Chiddy’s temple. “So fucking beautiful. You...you wouldn’t even _believe_ how beautiful she is. A goddess. A...gorgeous, rose...goddess.”

Chiddy snickers and tilts his beer back. 

“So you’ve said,” he says wryly. “Several times, actually. This girl’s really done a number on you, you know that?”

Scott sighs and sips some more of his whisky. It’s far too good to just toss back. This is the kind of whisky he grew up drinking, aged to perfection, smooth, sliding like silk over his tongue. He exhales slowly, luxuriously, and tilts his head back until it gently thuds against the wood of their booth. 

“All rosy,” he says in a reverent half-whisper. Eric frowns. 

“What was rosy?” he says, perplexed, and Chiddy shakes his head in warning, but Scott is far too drunk by this point to care. 

“It was _all_ rosy,” he says with emphasis. “She was...rose. This glorious rose. I’d never seen that before, you know? Pink and red and mauve and all the other ones, but not this one.”

Eric looks more confused than ever, which seems to be Chiddy’s cue to grab Scott by the collar and propel him forcibly out of his seat. 

“C’mon, let’s get the next round, eh?” he says a bit too cheerfully, and the next thing Scott knows they’re at the bar. 

“You can’t go on like that,” Chiddy mutters under his breath. “Eric doesn’t know about the...you know. You can’t talk about it in front of people, they’re going to think you’re crazy.”

Scott grins lazily. “ _You_ don’t think I’m crazy.”

“Well, I’m an idiot who puts up with you for reasons I don’t fully understand. But quit going on about it in public, all right?”

Scott blows out a long, slow breath, and then another. “All right,” he says, drawing out the _l_ sound because it feels fun in his mouth. “Did I tell you when I first saw them?”

Chiddy holds up three fingers at the barman, who grunts in response. “Yes, you did. Several times. Although not as many times as you’ve told me that Tessa is beautiful.”

“She _is_ , Chiddy, she’s so fucking beautiful, I can’t even—”

Three foaming mugs of beer appear before them, and Chiddy shoves one in Scott’s hands, cutting him off unceremoniously. 

“You said that already. Drink your beer and shut up, will you?”

Scott subsides, but as he stumbles off towards their booth in Chiddy’s wake, he’s aware of the bright pops of orange over a dark haze of blue, and it makes him smile. 

He doesn’t actually remember how old he was when he realised there was a name for the colours. They’ve always been with him, as long as he can remember. The story he’s told Chiddy, over and over again, is from when he was about three. 

His mother was just starting to teach him his colours, pointing to things like an apple and saying _red_ or the sky and saying _blue_. He didn’t understand right away, because lots of things had colours and a lot of times when he pointed and said _blue_ or _red_ or _yellow_ , his mother would frown and correct him gently, tell him that no, it was something different. But this time, he got it right, he was sure of it. 

Danny and Charlie were always brownish-red at their cores, a vibrant warm safe colour, like the pelt of a stag or the colour of a rugby ball, something essentially strong and masculine and sturdy. But he didn’t know all those words, and he knew that it was something close to red, so one night he trundled over to Danny on his little sturdy legs, patted Danny’s knee, and said, “Red, Mama. _Red_.”

Alma looked up and blinked at him, shocked, because Danny was wearing grey trousers and a white shirt and had nothing on at all that could possibly be construed as red. 

“No, love, it’s not red,” she’d said absent-mindedly, and then went back to whatever it was she was doing, probably chopping vegetables at the kitchen sink or stirring something. Scott doesn’t remember all the details. 

“ _Red_ ,” he’d insisted in his high little-boy voice. “Danny’s _red_ , Mama.”

She must have thought it was a game, because then she smiled a little, teasing, and said, “All right, then what am I, Scotty?”

He’d puzzled and puzzled, wandering over to her and holding onto her dress, patting the fabric with small plump hands. 

“I don’t know, Mama,” he’d said truthfully, because he could see her very well, with that soft brown haze around her, lighter and more dun-coloured than his brothers, a nut-brown colour like cinnamon and the grain of the wood on their kitchen table. But he didn’t know the word. 

“That one, Mama,” he’d said finally, pointing at the little jars of spices she kept on a shelf over the stove. “That one.”

He’d persisted until she pulled down the jars and let him look, and when he found the one with cinnamon he shook it into her hand and pointed, excited. 

“That one!” he’d said with pride and pleasure evident in his voice. “That one, Mama.”

Her face had shifted suddenly, fear bright in her eyes, before she’d swallowed and said, “Yes, I suppose I am that one, _a bhailach_ ,” and she’d turned back to getting the supper on. He hadn’t known then. She’d told him, years later. But that was the first moment she realised how different he was. How different he would be. 

The rest of that evening had gone on as usual, dinner and the older boys working their sums with their father in the front parlour, and then family prayers and bed, and he’d thought nothing of it. But over the next few days, his mother had asked him over and over again what colours things were. If he said he didn’t know, she’d ask him to name something else that had that same colour, and then she’d teach him the name. For nearly two weeks they did this, and then one afternoon they were outside together, walking down the street, and he pointed up at the sky where a flock of birds was winging past.

“Orange, Mama!” he’d exclaimed with delight. “So much orange.”

She’d stopped dead on the sidewalk and closed her eyes. She looked like she was about to cry, so he tugged on her hand, worried. 

“Mama?”

She opened her eyes. 

“What are you feeling right now, Scotty?”

He’d shrugged. He liked the birds, liked the shape they made in the sky, so fast and swooping against the clear bright blue of it. 

“Happy, Mama.”

She’d sniffled and dashed something away from under her eyes. 

“Oh, _a bhailach_ ,” she’d said softly. “I thought so.” 

She’d taught him more as he’d gotten older, learned what all his colours meant, learned to ask when he was feeling everything entirely too much and needed someone to help sort out the swirling maelstroms in his brain. She taught him not to talk about the colours to anyone, too. She warned him time and time again, _don’t tell anyone, Scotty, anyone who isn’t us. They’ll think you’re crazy, love, they’ll try to have you put away somewhere. Keep them safe, here at home with us, please, sweetheart._

And when he started drawing and then painting, the talent clearly showing through by the time he was five or six, that’s when his mother told him that this had to be a gift from God. That God had given him the colours and the ability to show them to other people, to bring them to life on his canvas and on paper, and that such a gift was not to be squandered. But, she’d reminded him, he couldn’t use his gifts from God if he was locked up somewhere because people thought he’d gone mad, and so he couldn’t tell anyone. Ever. 

He’d promised her, and he’d kept his word, all through primary school and then the Presbyterian grammar school his parents scraped and saved for, so determined that their youngest would have a proper education even though Charlie and Danny had both left school at sixteen to go work. He’d won a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh, studied under the great Joseph Paton, learned more than he’d ever dreamed was possible in the swirl of a brush across blank canvas. But he never once told Paton about the colours, even when the words begged to fall from his tongue. The fear in his mother’s eyes, the desperation in her voice, was stronger even than his desire to tell the man he revered and respected with all his being, the man who taught him how to take the pictures teeming in his brain and make them come to life before his eyes.

He’d kept the secret until he was 21, fresh off the train from Edinburgh, alone and friendless and down to his last ten shillings. He’d been wandering wide-eyed and scared to death through the city, and had stumbled into this very pub one night about half an hour before closing. He had enough money for food or a pint, and he’d chosen food. But still, he’d wistfully eyed the fresh foamy beer as it was poured while he wolfed down his beef and potatoes. 

And then he’d felt someone jostle his elbow and looked over to find a fine-boned young man with short black hair that stuck up in spikes, like the man had run his hands through it fifteen or twenty times. He had dark brown eyes and a huge grin, and he looked impossibly friendly for someone in London. 

“Buy you a pint?” the man had asked. “I’m Patrick. But I go by Chiddy.”

Scott had blinked. “Chiddy?”

The man had flushed a little, but his grin never wavered. “A nickname from when I was a kid. Really, though, d’you want one?”

Scott had nodded, a bit dumbstruck, and Chiddy had ordered two beers and then pushed one over in Scott’s direction. 

“You looked like you could use one,” he’d said simply, and then proceeded to drain half of his beer in one go. Suitably impressed, Scott had done likewise. 

They’d proceeded to get royally drunk that night, whereupon Chiddy had confessed that he was a junior reporter for one of the smaller London papers and he’d recently been betrayed by his fiancée, who had apparently abandoned him for the dubious favours of a farmer from Yorkshire. Scott, under the influence of a great deal of beer and one or two cheap whiskeys, admitted that he was Scottish, an artist, penniless, and saw specific colours related to whatever emotion he was feeling at the time. 

Also that he had no place to sleep that night. 

He awoke the next morning on the very small, very lumpy couch in Chiddy’s flat. He had a raging hangover, no memory of how he had arrived there, and a nagging sense that he’d said something very, very foolish the night before but couldn’t quite remember what it was. Then he blinked and saw the dull charcoal fuzz that meant exhaustion and perhaps a bit of misery, and it all came flooding back. 

He’d told a perfect stranger about the colours. 

But Chiddy, when he woke, said nothing at all beyond, “I fancy we need the hair of the dog this morning.” After sharing eggs and toast and a glass of porter each, he’d braced both elbows on the miniscule dining table and faced Scott squarely. Scott had swallowed bitter bile, wondering exactly how badly this was going to go, wondering if the only person who’d been kind to him so far was about to question his basic sanity. 

Instead, Chiddy had looked him in the eye and said, “Let’s see about getting you somewhere to live,” and that had been that. 

Three years later, Chiddy is still his best friend, his confidante, the person (besides his family) that Scott trusts most in the world, and Chiddy is the only one who can possibly understand about Tessa. Tessa, amazing, beautiful Tessa, who is the dizzying hue that you only find at the heart of a rose, Tessa who has given him a whole new colour, Tessa whose green eyes and slow sly smile and soft voice make his mind spin and his whole body tighten with something hot and desperate. 

But he can’t talk about it in front of Eric, and now Paul and Kevin have dropped by to chat and celebrate Scott’s incredible good fortune in landing a commission from an earl, and he can’t talk about the colours, or about Tessa, really. He’ll have to wait until later, when he can get Chiddy alone and make him understand, _really_ understand, what this means. 

***

Three hours later, after a lot more drinks and toasts and good-natured chaffing from the lads, he and Chiddy are staggering home at two in the morning. Scott is not entirely sure where his feet are, because they no longer feel attached to his body the way they used to, but he has confidence in Chiddy’s navigational skills. So far they haven’t fallen into the gutter or broken any bones, so he figures Chiddy is doing wonderfully. 

They stop under a street lamp at an intersection. It’s cold, the wind whipping the ends of their scarves and slicing through layers of wool and cotton, but the alcohol dulls the bite of it. Scott reaches out carefully and pats the side of Chiddy’s head, like a small child would pat a stuffed toy. 

“You understand,” he says, the syllables feeling thick in his mouth. “What she’s like. What this means. You understand.”

Chiddy raises an eyebrow. 

“Not really, no. I thought this was your big chance, Scott, this was where you were going to show the world of art what you can do. You can’t afford to get hung up on this girl. You know that, right?”

Scott shakes his head, frustrated. 

“It’s not...I’m not _doing_ anything,” he points out, labouring to make all the words make sense. “I’m not _going_ to do anything. I just...I had to tell you. I had to tell someone.”

Chiddy looks at him, worry and kindness in his dark eyes. 

“All right,” he says, and then shivers and tucks the end of his scarf back into his coat. “Just remember that she’s the daughter of an earl, yeah? This can’t be anything. Not if you want that portrait going up in the National Gallery.”

Scott makes a noise of irritation and starts walking again. He’s still having trouble not tripping over his own feet, but practically anything is better than being reminded again and again of what he can’t have. Chiddy falls into step beside him, and they’re quiet for a few minutes. 

“What is it about her?” Chiddy says suddenly, after two or three blocks of silence. “I mean, yes, she’s beautiful, but it has to be more than that.”

Scott smiles reflexively. 

“I told you — I saw a new colour with her. This deep rose colour. I told you about that.”

Chiddy snorts. “You practically told the whole bar about that. Thank God they all thought you were just drunk and not crazy.”

“Yes, well, anyway... that doesn’t happen very often. That I see a new colour just for one person. It’s important. It... means something.”

“What does it mean?”

Scott’s quiet for a minute, trying to figure out how to explain this with all the alcohol sloshing around in his brain right now. 

“It means I feel something, something... strong,” he says finally. “That this person is important to me somehow.”

“But you’d just met her!”

“I know. It wasn’t clear right away, but the longer we talked…”

He trails off, remembering it, the way he’d been bending over his case, looking for a charcoal pencil, when he’d heard the tapping of shoes behind him and he’d turned around. She’d been standing there in a pale blue silk dress, looking very poised and put together, and he’d nearly dropped the paper and brush he was holding. He’d never seen anyone so perfect in all his life. 

She’d smiled at him, a tight, careful smile, and said, “You must be the portrait painter. I’m Lady Tessa. How do you do?”

And he had just stood there, like an idiot, staring at her. Her face, that delicate, fine-boned face with its pert little nose, those huge green eyes with their thick black lashes, the dark hair swept back in intricate coils, all of it absolutely floored him. He’s painted beautiful women before, but never in his life has he been so awestruck as he was in that moment. 

He’d finally regained his manners and held out a hand even though it was a terrible breach of etiquette, stammering, “Scott Moir, I — I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” and she’d shaken his hand even though she’d looked rather confused doing it. She wasn’t wearing gloves, and the touch of her skin to his felt like someone had shocked him, like an exposed wire touching him, almost painful in its intensity. 

He’d asked her to have a seat in the chair by the window, so he could see the way the light worked on that side of the room. The earl was right — it was perfect (and so was she), and he’d asked if she wouldn’t mind letting him do some preliminary sketches for their first session so he could get an idea of what sort of pose might work best and how to best use the light to his advantage. It was then, when she was seated looking out the window, that he first noticed it, a faint rose haze around her that he hadn’t seen when she came in. 

They’d been quiet while he worked, mostly, although she kept looking over at him as though she wanted to ask a question. When they did talk, it was light, uncomplicated, about what she wanted to wear for the portrait and what sort of background he planned to use. She mentioned tea at a friend’s house later in the day, and they chatted for a bit about the absurdities of afternoon tea ceremonies, but there was still that undercurrent of something _else_ there, something running deep and swift under the banal surface eddies of easy chitchat. 

They’d ended up arguing briefly, he remembers - she’d asked what he wanted her to wear for the portrait, he’d mentioned her father, and she had immediately shut down. Up until that point, he’d felt her curiosity, and that other, more intense something, but the moment he brought up the earl, all of that disappeared. She’d given him a cool look and snapped that he could paint her however he liked in the sort of tone that he felt one would use with a misbehaving spaniel. 

It had made him angry. Did she not understand how important this was for him? That this wasn’t just about whatever familial tensions she clearly had with her father, that this was his _career_ they were talking about? He’d done his best to make it clear that while the earl was his employer, and while Tessa herself certainly had some say in the final product, he, Scott, was the final arbiter of how the portrait was done. It was _his_ work, dammit, and no hoity-toity noblewoman was going to dictate to him how it was to be done. 

There’d been a fairly frosty silence after that. 

She’d touched him one more time as he was packing up his things to go, a brush of her fingers at his elbow. He’d nearly gasped at the contact before remembering that he couldn’t make an idiot of himself like that. When he turned, the colour was clearer than ever, deeper than before, a beautiful rich rose, and he almost reached out to touch it. 

“Do you mind if I make some adjustments to my dress for next time?” she’d asked, politely, or at least he thinks she said that, he can’t quite remember the words. She’d been standing there, prim and tidy, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and he’d nodded, incapable of saying a single word. She had a colour, all her own. She had a colour, and that was almost as exhilarating as it was terrifying. 

“Very well then. I’ll see you next Thursday,” she said quietly, and then she was gone, her high-heeled boots clipping across the hardwood floors quickly, the sound echoing in the hallway even after she vanished from his sight. 

He yanks himself back to the present, with Chiddy staring at him expectantly, and sighs. 

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he says, shrugging. “She just... I’ve never had a woman knock me off my feet like that before, ever. I’ve never seen a colour like that so quickly. There’s just something about her.” He winces at Chiddy’s accusatory look. “I’m not going to do anything about it! I’m not going to ruin this. I’m not a green lad anymore, Chid, I can control myself.”

Chiddy makes a noise that could charitably be interpreted as a laugh, and then claps Scott on the shoulder. 

“Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying,” he says. The wind kicks up, carrying the last sounds away in a sharp gust. Scott hunches his shoulders against the chill of it and looks up. Somehow they’re at his flat, even though he doesn’t remember turning onto his street. 

“I will be,” he insists, and Chiddy raises his eyes heavenward before shoving Scott up the steps to the front stoop. 

“Get inside, it’s fucking freezing out here,” Chiddy says fondly. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

He goes into the cold, dark, silent vestibule, locks the door behind him, and starts the long climb up the steps. It’ll be just as cold in his little garret room, and he thinks mournfully of roaring fires and pot-bellied stoves and the comforting rattle of a radiator warming up. 

Out of the corners of his eyes, he sees hazy fragments of deep, deep rose. 

* * *

Eliza is reading from a manual on etiquette. She has been reading from it for the past half hour, and shows absolutely no sign of letting up. 

“Good manners do not include the observance of arbitrary rules of etiquette,” Eliza intones, looking over at where Tessa is curled up in the window seat to be sure that she’s listening. “A breach of the latter may be excused, while a breach of good manners is never forgotten.”

She pauses, and Tessa blinks twice and says _mm-hmm_ without really thinking about it. She is months away from being twenty-two years of age, and one would think that by this point Eliza would be done with her desire to inculcate Tessa with the dictums of every single etiquette manual known to mankind. 

One would be wrong. 

“Well-mannered people,” Eliza reads solemnly, “with what John Hughes calls ‘an honest hypocrisy,’ give attention to topics under discussion in which, perhaps, they feel no interest. It has been said that conversation is a lost art…”

Tessa, by means of carefully practiced focussing techniques, manages to tune her out at this point. It is not necessarily easy, but as she stares out the window and muses over what happened yesterday, Eliza’s droning fades to a dull murmur and Tessa stares off into the cloudy grey sky and lets her mind wander. 

If she’s honest, it’s been wandering ever since she met the new portrait painter yesterday afternoon. She’d known from Meggy’s breathless account last week that he was handsome, and she’d had some vague idea of having a bit of fun with him to alleviate the deathly dullness of the Season in winter, but she had not been at all prepared for the reality of him. 

It started with his backside. 

She’d wandered into the east wing a few minutes past three o’clock, not quite fashionably late but edging towards that direction, and had walked into the long parlour expecting him to already have his things set up, ready for her sitting. She had _not_ expected to walk in and be confronted with his absolutely perfect posterior, bent over a cracked leather case, wool trousers clinging obscenely to every square inch of him. 

She is not lying to herself when she admits that it is the finest backside she’s ever seen in her life, and she’s danced, dined, and occupied darkened conservatories with a varied assortment of cricket players, polo players, fencers, naval captains, and cavalry men. None of them had a backside like this man. None of them. 

She really would not have minded taking a few minutes to fully appreciate the view, but at the sound of her footsteps he sprang upright, turned, and then just stood there, speechless, staring. It was a bit disconcerting, really. She’s used to men giving her appreciative glances — sometimes rather long appreciative glances — but this sort of dumbfounded goggling seemed a bit much. 

Finally, in an effort to break the silent staring stalemate, she’d introduced herself, and to her dismay, he’d stuck out his hand like an American oil magnate at a business meeting. She’s not a stickler for etiquette, God knows, but even she hadn’t known what to do with this. It was appropriate for a gentleman to bow to a lady he had just met, and perhaps a lady might even offer her hand if she wished to intimate that a deeper acquaintanceship was desirable, but in absolutely no circumstance was a gentleman to stick out his hand as if both parties were sealing a contract or some such absurdity. 

But he hadn’t put his hand down, and the ridiculous silence was stretching out, and finally she just shaken his hand, if for no other reason than to _do_ something. And that’s when it had happened. 

She’s touched men before, and been touched, in places far less innocuous than her hand, but even so, this sort of contact was... unusual. By and large, the first touch of a man’s hand on her own is through two layers of gloves, and for some reason, this innocent brush of fingers had affected her like the most intimate caress. She had almost snatched her hand back, so intense was the feeling, a shock between her palm and his like a lick of flame against her unprotected skin. 

“Please, umm, sit down over there, by the window,” he’d babbled, sounding as breathless as she felt. “It’s the light, you see, it’s better over there, with your face, and…”

She’d taken her seat as directed, and then she realised that, unless he asked her to turn towards the window, she had complete license to look him over as much as she liked. 

It was license worth having. He wasn’t exactly tall, but tall enough that he had a good four or five inches on her, and oh, Meggy had not been lying about his build. Broad shoulders, a trim waist, and though his wool trousers gave little indication about his legs, she was willing to bet they were sufficiently muscular. The fact that he was seated made it impossible to enjoy further glimpses of that astonishingly perfect backside, but she thought that perhaps that was just as well. After all, it wouldn’t do to pin him down and kiss him senseless during the first sitting. She was the daughter of an earl — she had _manners_ , damn it. 

However, having manners did not stop her from surreptitiously ogling him as he frowned in concentration and sketched frantically with his charcoal pencil. He had bold features, a prominent nose (she could think of several uses for that nose), a lovely mobile mouth that seemed to express everything he felt at any given moment, and his eyes... God, his eyes. She usually didn’t give a damn about a man’s eyes — after all, blue or grey or brown or green generally didn’t matter much when a man had his hand, or his head, up one’s skirts. But his eyes... hazel and changeable, shifting from light brown to green as the light changed, or as his mood shifted, darkening a little when he was frustrated and crumpling up his line drawing, getting lighter and more vividly green when he looked up at her. It was mesmerising, wondering what was going on with each tiny shift in colour. 

They’d chatted desultorily about the sort of background he wanted to use (he was leaning towards something natural, trees and a brook or some such nonsense, whereas she suggested that a nice classical column and some drapery would do quite well), and about the absurdity of afternoon tea at Georgiana’s, who always insisted on using her most elaborate tea service and starving everyone with tiny slivers of cucumber stuffed into even tinier pieces of soggy bread. 

And then he’d fallen silent, sketching in a veritable frenzy. After a long few moments, he’d shaken his head, crumpled up the drawing, and wiped his hands on a bit of cloth lying on top of his case. 

“It’s a bit warm in here,” he’d said, and she’d caught a hint of a brogue, a faint burr to his _r_ ’s and a slight lilt to the cadence of his speech. “D’you mind if I…”

Without finishing the sentence, he’d shrugged out of his jacket, letting it fall crumpled over the back of his chair, and then he’d unbuttoned his shirtsleeves and proceeded to roll them up, briskly, staring down into his leather case with an absent-minded frown all the while, as if rolling up one’s sleeves like a dockworker was something that happened every day. 

She’d barely managed to stay in her seat without combusting on the spot. It was so... well, _intimate_ isn’t really the word to describe it. More like sensual, only it was perfectly clear that his reasons were purely for his own comfort, and that he had absolutely no idea what it was doing to her, watching him bare his forearms with no more concern than he’d have taking off his hat. He still had his vest on, having apparently decided to not completely abandon all sense of propriety, but as she watched, transfixed, he reached up and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his collar. 

Which was when it occurred to her in a rush that his shirt was all of a piece. Unlike most of the professional men in the City, he wasn’t wearing a detachable collar or cuffs. Just a simple cotton shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, the collar unbuttoned, and with very little effort she could cross over to him, bend down, and finish the job. Less than half a minute, and she could have his vest off, the rest of his shirt undone, and that broad and no doubt muscular chest would be under her fingers, his bare skin warm and his heart pounding under her hands. 

She was growing wet at just the thought of it. 

With an effort, she’d reined herself in, taken a few deep breaths, and hoped he’d interpreted the glow on her cheeks to the warmth of the room rather than her pondering his half-naked body. He was still busily scratching away, and she swallowed hard as she noticed the play of muscle in his forearms, the slight dusting of hair against his fair skin. His throat, too — she could see the line where his collar hit, the skin slightly more tanned higher on his neck, as if he’d been working outdoors recently. It struck her low in the stomach, the thought of him painting some sign outdoors in his shirtsleeves, the mid-afternoon sun warm on his shoulders, that mop of messy brown hair lifting in the breeze. It was still warm enough in the afternoons to work outdoors, she thought, and at any rate it made for an excellent fantasy. 

He scribbled something on his line drawing, bit his lip, scribbled again, and then glanced up at her, his gaze impersonal and assessing. She didn’t like it, being stared at like that, as if she were already an abstract figure in his mind, nothing more than daubs of paint and brushstrokes. So, deliberately, she dropped her perfect posture and curled up in the chair like a cat, resting her elbow on the arm and cupping her chin in her hand, a pose both informal and interrogative. 

“Mr. Moir,” she said, low and almost purring. He jerked, startled, and looked away for a moment. When his eyes met hers again, there was nothing impersonal in them at all. If anything, he looked... guilty. Like he’d been caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t. The thought intrigued her mightily. 

“Lady Tessa?” 

He sounded a bit hoarse, which could be from not talking for over half an hour or could be from something else. 

“What would you like me to wear for these sessions?”

She’d phrased it as a carefully calculated proposition, giving him the freedom to dictate exactly how much (or how little) she wore. It took him a moment to process the tone as well as the words, and she could see the instant he did. His cheeks and ears turned a delicious pink, and he cleared his throat nervously. 

“Ah... well, your father expressed a preference for blue,” he hedged, and she let out a small huff of disappointment. What on earth was the _point_ of all this if he was going to play by the rules?

“Never mind what my father wanted,” she said impatiently, with a flick of her wrist to sweep away the mental image of the earl. “How do _you_ want to paint me?”

He was silent for a long moment, the pink in his cheeks progressing to a dull red, and then he said, very softly, “Like a goddess. An ancient goddess, like Diana and Venus and Athena all in one. Powerful and beautiful, and...perfect.”

This time she was the one surprised into silence. He waited for a moment, and then ducked his head. 

“I beg your pardon, I was too forward,” he apologised, and something twisted in her chest. 

“No, no, don’t apologise,” she said hastily. “I don’t — it was lovely, what you said. I’d like that.”

“I don’t think the earl would,” he said with a cynical little smile. “And since he’s the one…”

“Paying the bill?” she said, brutally, and he winced. 

“It’s not just about that,” he said with quiet dignity. “This is my chance, Lady Tessa. This is how I can prove to everyone who matters in my field that I’m worthy of recognition. That my work is more than just painting advertisements for grocers and doing portraits of wine merchants’ mothers. If I can prove I can do this —”

She’d stopped him with an upraised hand. She didn’t want to like him. She certainly didn’t want to sympathise with him, or experience a pang of fellow-feeling at the raw passion in his voice when he talked about his work. She’d longed her whole life to feel like that about something, _anything_ , and the fact that he did feel like that filled her with helpless envy and something like longing. 

“I see,” she’d said in that cool, firm tone she used with the servants. “It’s all right, really. Paint it however you’d like.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and she could see every emotion play out across those expressive features. Anger at her high-handed manner, resentment, and something like hurt, as if her dismissal of him could possibly matter given that they’d known each other for exactly an hour and a half. Then he set his jaw and his face closed off, his expression unreadable. 

“I will paint it however I’d like,” he said firmly. “Your father may be paying me, but I’m the artist, and I’ll paint this portrait as I see fit. Unless, of course, you have suggestions, which I will be happy to entertain.”

Compared to the informality of his previous tone and manner, this was tantamount to being dashed in the face with a bucket of cold water, but she was intrigued nonetheless. Most of the men she knew cared absolutely nothing for her true opinions, but would feign heartbreak at something as trivial as a sharply-worded retort. This man, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and collar open, somehow managed to meet her will with his own and yet gave her the ability to express her opinion at the same time. She had no idea what to make of him. 

“Very well,” she said, to mask her confusion. “If I think of anything, I’ll tell you.”

“Please do,” he said in a pleasant but dismissive tone, and went back to his drawing. 

She stewed in silence for another fifteen minutes, and it wasn’t until he was beginning to pack up his things that her brilliant idea occurred to her. She didn’t give herself time to overthink anything, lest she lose her nerve, and within seconds she was behind him, one hand on his elbow in a gesture that somehow felt more shockingly intimate than her fingers wrapped around another man’s cock. 

He turned quickly and then froze, staring at her with wide, unblinking eyes. She wasn’t sure he was breathing. 

“Mr. Moir?” 

He blinked once, slowly, and kept staring. He had a look of bewildered awe on his face, almost fear, and she was beginning to think that he was perhaps a bit mad when he seemed to shake himself out of his trance and stepped back, away from her touch. 

“Lady Tessa.” He said it almost as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I... I’m sorry. What is it?”

She almost didn’t say it, so shaken was she by his silent staring, but she’d had twenty-one years of getting away with doing outrageous things, and she thought that this was just another to add to the list. 

“Do you object to me changing my dress for our next sitting?” she asked carefully. “I feel that perhaps this is not best suited to the portrait, and I should like to present another option, if you have no particular preference for this one.”

She gestured to her pale blue silk dress, and his eyes followed her as if she were a snake charmer and he a cobra, swaying helplessly under her spell. 

“Yes,” he said absently. “I mean... no. No, I have no objections. None at all. Please wear whatever you would prefer.”

“Very well then,” she said. “I’ll see you next Thursday.”

He nodded, and when he ventured nothing else on the subject, she took her leave, her heeled boots clicking on the carefully waxed wood floors and down the corridor. When she reached the landing, she made sure that no one was in sight, and then leaned back against the wall, one hand to her stomach, and let out a long breath. 

Sweet holy mother of God, but this was so much more intense than she’d bargained for. She’d imagined seducing a handsome young painter with good muscles and no inhibitions in bed. She hadn’t counted on a possible madman who stared at her far too long for no apparent reason and whose touch made her knees tremble. Nor had she counted on the way he spoke to her, by turns professional and reverent and then with something hoarse and raw that made something deep inside her tighten with unthinking need. 

She wasn’t going to turn back, though. Not now, not when he’d already intrigued her so much in a brief two-hour session. She just needed to turn the tables, make sure that he wasn’t the only one with surprises in store. With the dress she had in mind, that would be done easily enough. 

Tessa falls back into reality with a jolt at Eliza’s voice, no longer a dull rumble but sharper, more demanding. 

“Miss Tessa!” her maid is saying crisply. “Are you listening to me? I just asked —” Eliza’s voice breaks off. “Are you ill? You look ill — your cheeks are all flushed, and your eyes are too shiny. Ought I to call for the doctor, hmm?”

Tessa shakes her head and presses one hand to her stomach, just as she had yesterday. 

“No, Eliza, I’m quite well,” she says. Her voice sounds faraway in her own ears. She focuses on steadying her breathing, presses her thighs together under the layers of her dress. Just thinking about him has her aching in a way she’s not used to, a way she feels won’t be easy to dispel in her bath or under the coverlet late at night. 

“Well, I suppose I must take your word for it, but I don’t know as I shouldn’t send down to the kitchen for a cup of that herbal tea Mrs. Osgoode makes. Might do you a world of good, Miss Tessa, I do think.”

Tessa shifts on the window seat, staring out at the sky still, her heart hammering in her ears. 

“Yes, Eliza, whatever you think. A tisane would be fine.”

Eliza bustles off to ring the bell, and Tessa moves the hand on her stomach down to her ankle, drawing lazy circles over her silk stocking. She wants to feel him, she realises in a flash of panicked lust, not just his palm in hers or her hand on his elbow, but all of him, all that muscle and weight on top of her, those strong fingers on her breasts and belly, parting her thighs. She wants him inside her, wants to let him do things she’s never let a man do, wants to ride him and bring him to completion and watch that expressive face twist in ecstasy as he comes. She wants to shock him, dazzle him, overcome him, make him feel the same breathless, terrified excitement she does. 

She wants him. That’s the simplest way to put it, really. She wants him, and she refuses to think of all the reasons why she shouldn’t. 

She draws in a deep breath, and another, and then gets up. Eliza’s left the room on some errand, she assumes, and so she goes into her bedroom, over to the wardrobe, and begins to rummage through the gowns hung there until she finds the one she wants. 

She pulls it out and lays it across her bed, admiring the way the light catches the almost sheer silk and the drape of the Valenciennes lace. It’s beautiful, almost otherworldly, and she can’t think of anything that will accomplish her purposes in a more spectacular fashion. 

Smiling to herself, she puts it away again and closes the door to the wardrobe, clenches her teeth against the wave of nerves that washes over her when she lets herself think about what a risk this is. She doesn’t care anymore. 

This is for her, and only her, and damned if she won’t let herself have this once, just once, before she’s married or dead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As one reader guessed after the last chapter, Scott has a form of synesthesia - "a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived... by one or more additional senses such as sight. Another form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people's names with a sensory perception such as smell, color or flavor." (Source is Neuroscience for Kids, from washington.edu, because I am definitely _not_ a neuroscientist and need it put in kid-friendly language for me.) The version of synesthesia I have given Scott in this story is very, very rare, if the research I have done is accurate. Essentially, he sees colours related to the emotions he is feeling at the time, and he sees particular colours associated with important people in his life - family, close friends, etc. 
> 
> From the research I have done, synesthesia seems to be completely arbitrary - for instance, Scott's colours are not associated with common symbolic perceptions of colour, and he has no control over what colours are associated with particular emotions. As you may have gleaned thus far, dark blue and orange are both associated with joy/happiness, while fear represents itself as white or light grey. I have done my best to pick random colours as I go along, so any associations are purely arbitrary. 
> 
> The book that Eliza reads from at the beginning of Tessa's section is an actual book on etiquette from 1892. It was written by Mrs. Clara Jessup Moore, and its full title is _Social Ethics and Society Duties: Thorough Education of Girls for Wives and Mothers and for Professions_. To be perfectly honest, I was kind of impressed that professions was even on the list in 1892, so props to Eliza for picking this particular book!
> 
> Finally, I hope that you enjoy this chapter, and if you feel so moved, leave a comment. They truly do make my day. 
> 
> Footnotes:  
>  _a bhailach_ is a Gaelic term that roughly translates to “beloved boy”; it’s an endearment that would be used with a child in one’s immediate family 
> 
> Links for synesthesia research (and Clara Jessup's masterpiece):  
> [Neuroscience for Kids](https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html)  
> [Color Synesthesia](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4286234/)  
> (a more in-depth look at synesthesia, with examples)  
> [Social Ethics and Society Duties](https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=_1YEAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA1)


	4. sunbeam flaring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Scott left home to live in the big city, his mother made him promise three things: that he wouldn’t waste money drinking, that he’d take a Bible with him, and that he wouldn’t sleep with women of easy virtue. 
> 
> He has kept exactly one of those promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all again and again! For reading, for commenting, for leaving kudos, for writing encouraging notes on Twitter. You are such wonderful readers, and I appreciate you all so very much. 
> 
> So...in this chapter, Tessa implements her grand plan, and it doesn't go quite as expected. Don't be too mad at her (or at him, for that matter). I really wanted them getting together to be easy and painless, but they're both stubborn and difficult and refused to do what I wanted. Exasperating creatures. 
> 
> Next chapter is when we get into the E-rated stuff, so...things to look forward to, I hope? I'm certainly enjoying plotting it out. And I would be very remiss if I neglected to thank my lovely betas, who reassure me when I doubt myself and fix all my incorrect em dashes. Y'all are the best. 
> 
> Title taken from Pablo Neruda's "I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair":
>
>>   
> I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,  
> the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,  
> I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
>> 
>> and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,  
> hunting for you, for your hot heart,  
> like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.  
> 

When Scott left home to live in the big city, his mother made him promise three things: that he wouldn’t waste money drinking, that he’d take a Bible with him, and that he wouldn’t sleep with women of easy virtue. 

He has kept exactly one of those promises. 

(He doesn’t think that it’s important that his Bible has been gathering dust on his nightstand for three years. It’s still _there_.)

Suffice it to say that he’s slept with his share of London since getting off that train three years ago. He hadn’t exactly been a virgin then, either, but he’s learned quite a lot from life in the city. It all started his third night in London with a very pretty cabaret dancer named Maggie and went on to comprise what Scott considers to be a respectable but not outrageous number of women. He does his best to be a thoughtful lover, to make sure that his partners are enjoying themselves, but it’s never very serious. All in all, he’s happy if both parties walk away feeling satisfied and manage to part friends. He hasn’t been looking for more than that. He figures that someday he’ll fall in love, years from now, when he’s settled in his career and has plenty of money and status to attract a nice girl, someone he can take home to his mother. In the meantime, he’s a healthy young Scotsman in his mid-twenties, and he might as well have a bit of fun. 

There’s also the fact that he just likes women. Not only to sleep with, but in general. He likes the way they laugh, sometimes soft and lilting, sometimes bawdy and raucous. He likes the way they smile, the warmth it spreads through him. He likes the gentleness of their hands and the sweet, heavy notes of their perfume, likes the softness of their hair. He likes the sounds they make, and there is almost nothing sweeter than coaxing gasps and sharp cries of pleasure out of a woman, nothing better than knowing he’s making someone feel _that_ good, knowing that she’s hurtling towards climax because of him. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking he’s some sort of Lothario, but he at least does his best to make sure the woman in question on any given night gets to come as many times as she wants. 

This may or may not have earned him a certain reputation among the women of his circle, and of his neighbourhood, but he attributes all of that to the absolute dearth of men who even attempt to get a woman off. Bastards, the lot of them. 

At any rate, he feels that he’s safe in saying that he’s fairly well-experienced by the time he’s twenty-five. 

None of that prepares him in any way for Lady Tessa Virtue. 

He’s so nervous going back to the Virtues’ townhouse the next Thursday; his heart is pounding, and he can feel prickles of sweat blooming on his forehead and under his arms. He hasn’t thought of anything else during the rest of the week, even when he had other work to do. All he can see in his mind’s eye is Tessa, her perfect face, her pretty figure, all in blue silk and lace like a dainty confection, just perfect to take a bite out of. And that’s not even getting into the fact that she has a colour, that he reacted to her more strongly than he reacts to almost anybody, especially on first sight. But he pushes the thoughts away as resolutely as he can, and he reminds himself over and over that she’s his employer’s daughter, a lady, a member of the peerage, and he had best keep his fucking lower-class hands to himself. 

(There’s a stack of drawings of Tessa in the bottom of his case that would argue these reminders are not working at all, but he pretends that they’re just part of his job, and not a symptom of his insane obsession over a woman he barely even knows.)

When he steps into the vestibule, under the watchful and extremely disapproving eye of Hargreave, his hands are starting to shake. He takes a deep breath, and then another, and endeavours to compose himself as he’s shown into the east wing and informed that Lady Tessa will join him shortly. He occupies himself setting up his supplies and examining the line drawings he did last week, even though he’s looked at them for hours every day. He thinks he knows how he wants to pose her, where the light will catch the lovely contours and lines of her face best, but he wants to be sure, and she did say something last week about changing her dress. That might make a difference. 

He doesn’t hear her come in at first. In fact, he doesn’t register she’s in the room until he hears the door click shut and the bolt on the lock being shot home. He whirls around then, slightly panicked, and then just stares in bewilderment. 

She appears to be wearing some sort of...dressing gown. He’s really not sure how to describe it. It doesn’t have a sash at the waist, but rather seems to fasten somewhere along the side. It’s a dark teal, patterned subtly with birds and flowers in soft cream shades. What really puzzles him is that she’s barefoot. He blinks once, twice, but she’s still barefoot, and she’s surrounded by a hazy aura of deep rose. At least that hasn’t changed. 

Before he can say anything, she turns from bolting the door and gives him a long, slow look, up and down, like she’s assessing him somehow. 

“Mr. Moir,” she says, leaning back against the door and smiling. It’s that lazy, satisfied, catlike smile he remembers from before, and it kicks his nerves back into overdrive. 

“Lady Tessa,” he says, his voice a good deal higher than usual. He coughs to clear his throat, and he can feel his cheeks heat. Goddamnit, all he wants is to impress this woman, and it seems like he’s constantly fated to look the fool in front of her. 

“It’s good to see you,” she says, her voice low and pleased, and his flush deepens. She begins walking towards him, padding across the floor silently in her bare feet. He notices in a daze that her feet are lovely — small and finely boned, the arches high. There was an old story his grandmother used to tell about a noblewoman who had such high arches that water could flow beneath her feet, and that was a sign of her true noble ancestry. A silly story, but Tessa’s arches are beautiful, nonetheless. 

“You… ...you as well,” he stammers, remembering that he ought to make a response of some kind. He gestures at his easel and canvas, already set up, and nearly knocks over his palette in the process. 

“Where do you want me?” she asks, coming to a stop a few feet before him. He catches her scent, something floral and expensive, something that screams Paris, and the fine hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck lift. She makes him feel like an exposed wire, like the filament of an electric bulb. His flat doesn’t have them yet, but this house does. He feels like every fibre of his body is arcing, leaping, in a white-hot flame, trying to reach out to her. 

He takes a breath, trying to get his thoughts in order again, and stares at her helplessly. Her smile deepens. 

“Sorry, what did you say?” He’s hopeless. Utterly hopeless. 

“Where do you want me?” Her voice isn’t irritated, thank God — she just sounds amused, even playful. That is good. 

“Over by the window, please. Standing, if you don’t mind. We can take breaks if you need them, you won’t have to stand the whole two hours.”

She nods and pads off towards the window, leaving a faint trace of perfume in the air. He basks in it, greedily. 

“Is this the... umm... the new dress you were planning to wear?” he asks, desperately trying to make small talk as he readies his palette and tries to determine if he has what he needs to recreate that gorgeous deep teal colour. She shakes her head. She looks withdrawn all of a sudden, almost nervous, and then with a visible effort she steels herself and reaches for the fastenings at her side. 

“No, it’s actually not,” she says, fingers working busily, and then the robe sags loose and she opens it, shrugs it off her shoulders to puddle on the floor. She lifts her chin in defiance and steps forward, letting the light illumine her from behind. 

Scott drops his palette on the floor, brush flying, paint spattering. He doesn’t even notice. 

She’s practically naked. That’s the first and only thought that goes through his mind. She’s the Earl of Stafford’s daughter, the woman he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about for a solid seven days, and she’s practically naked. 

He may combust on the spot. 

She’s wearing a gown, of sorts. It’s long, going almost to her ankles. The bodice is made of something lacy, and it’s fitted, but it doesn’t have sleeves, just wide bands of material at the shoulder. The filmy skirt sweeps up to a point at her sternum and falls gracefully to the hem. 

But the salient point of the gown isn’t its construction — it’s the fabric. All of which is utterly, completely sheer. 

He can see everything. Every single fucking detail, from the creamy rounds of her breasts with their dusk-pink nipples to the smooth taut belly below to the dark triangle of hair between her thighs. She might as well be nude, and with the light behind her as she stands at the window, she practically is. He can see the swell of her hips, the long lines of her thighs, even the indentation of her navel beneath the clinging fabric. All of it, bared to his gaze, and he can’t look away, can’t breathe, can’t do anything except stand there in stupefied silence and _want_. He dimly registers in the midst of his shock that he’s gone completely hard in his trousers, aching with desire, harder than he’s been since he was a boy of thirteen just learning what felt good when he touched himself. 

Tessa looks him over again and an unbelievably smug look comes over her face — very much the cat that caught the canary. She shifts a little, smoothing the fabric over her hips, well aware that the movement lets him catch a glimpse of her legs parting ever-so-slightly. She licks her lips, grinning. 

“Will this do, Mr. Moir?”

He chokes on air and starts to cough, which makes Tessa bite her lip to keep from laughing. It’s almost as mortifying as being caught by his mother kissing Jeanie MacKenzie behind the garden shed when he was fifteen. When he finally catches his breath, he opens his mouth and proceeds to say the stupidest thing he’s ever said in the whole of life. 

“You can’t wear that.”

Her self-satisfied expression morphs instantly into ill-concealed annoyance. 

“Whyever not?” 

She props one hand on her hip and gives him a defiant glare. 

“Because…” he sputters, trying to form words while every instinct in his body screams at him to go over there and gets his hands on her, _now_. “Because... because this is a professional portrait, commissioned by your father, and I can’t paint you practically in the... well... in the nude!”

Her lips purse tightly. 

“This is _not_ about my father,” she says, voice taut. “This is my portrait, and I’ll wear what I want in it. My father be damned.”

Part of Scott’s brain unhelpfully supplies that Lady Tessa Virtue cursing and practically naked is an unfairly arousing combination. The other part is still struggling to understand what on earth is going on in this moment. 

“But I can’t paint you like that,” he says with the dogged logic of a man who only gasps one sane thing. “I’m not even supposed to _see_ you like that. For God’s sake, you’re Lady Tessa Virtue. I’m not supposed to do _anything_ , other than... well, paint you.”

Her smile seems to be returning, although for what reason he cannot understand. 

“You don’t care for it, then?” she pouts, still somehow managing to look very pleased with herself. “Perhaps you’d like to see it from the back before you write it off entirely.”

She pivots on her toes and then leans slightly against the windowsill, bending her left knee, and Scott is left in the centre of the room, staring dumbly at her unfairly perfect backside. It is... impossibly lovely, small and exquisitely rounded, and the way her knee is bent gives him just a glimpse of what lies between her legs, and he can’t breathe. He cannot fucking _breathe._

“Jesus God,” he groans, and she twirls around at the words. She is glowing with delight, and for a moment it’s not the smug temptress of before. She’s just genuinely _happy_ , and that, more than anything else, is what’s making his heart thrash wildly in his chest. 

“I hoped you’d say that,” she says, and before he can even move, she’s crossing the space between them and launching herself into his arms. 

Seeing Tessa practically naked was a shock to his entire system. Touching her, having her whole body pressed against him, incinerates his senses. He can’t even discern colours right now, dizzy and weak from the onslaught. 

But when she slides one hand around the nape of his neck and pulls his head down so she can press her mouth to his, the world explodes. 

When he was five, his father took him to see the fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, in downtown Edinburgh. Scott was utterly delighted — the noise, the cheering, the bright pops of light in the sky, and the colours. He didn’t realise until he was much older that the colours he saw weren’t what everybody else was seeing, but when he was a wee lad of five, it didn’t matter. It was enough that the colours were there, and they were beautiful. 

Kissing Tessa is like seeing fireworks. He can’t think it through, he can’t analyse it. She’s just... _there_ , and she consumes his world, tearing through his cosmos like bright pops of fire against the night sky. At some point, he doesn’t really remember when or how, he hauls her tightly against him, one hand low on the small of her back, the other tangled in her beautiful dark hair, and when he finally starts coming back to himself, he’s leaving love bites down the column of her neck and she’s panting his name, arching her hips up in a fruitless effort to find friction. It jolts him so badly he lets her go with a sharp gasp, pushing her away gently, but with both hands. 

He straightens up with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and suddenly the fireworks in his vision start going grey at the edges with dread. What has he _done?_ His big chance, everything he’d hoped and worked for over the course of three long years, and here he’s gone and ruined it all. It doesn’t matter that she wore a gown that showed every inch of her body, it doesn’t matter that she started this. He knows how this will go. If he’s lucky, she’ll just have him fired while the earl is away and make up some convenient lie to save her own reputation. Scott will be out of a job, but he’s used to that. If he’s not lucky, though... if he’s not lucky, she’ll ruin his reputation, make sure he never gets another good commission as long as he lives. All his dreams of becoming a famous artist, of making his mama proud, will be utterly gone. 

“Well.” She sounds breathless but still pleased with herself, and he struggles to focus on her face against the encroaching grey. “You’re even better than I thought you’d be.”

He frowns, trying to still his racing, panicked heartbeat. “What?”

She reaches out and touches his cheek, but he flinches away. “Last week, during our first sitting. I had a feeling you’d be amazing. You’re so passionate and focused when you work, and all I could think about was getting your hands on me.”

She chuckles wryly. “Not very ladylike to say, I suppose, but it’s true. Although you look a bit dazed... weren’t expecting that, were you?”

He should fucking think not. 

“No,” he bites out, feeling the first stirrings of anger under the shock and fear and blind panic that still grips him. “No, I sure as hell was not.”

How _dare_ she sound so pleased with herself, so smug, when she’s just risked his entire career, his reputation? What sane man is ever going to let his wife sit for Scott Moir after this? What sane man will ever let his _daughter_ sit for him? What the hell has he done? What has _Tessa_ done?

“What’s wrong?” she says, sounding flippant. It grates on him. 

“What’s wrong?” he parrots, whirling away from her. His vision is still cloudy with grey, with a murky, horrible undertone of chartreuse. It’s what he always sees when he’s been dealt a nasty shock, the sort of green that makes him think of bile and slimy fungi growing on the undersides of rotting fallen trees. His hands are shaking. “What’s _wrong?_ Tessa... I mean, _Lady_ Tessa, do you really not understand?”

He turns back to face her. She looks surprised at his vehemence. 

“I’m your father’s employee,” he snaps at her. “He gave me this commission, gave me this chance to prove myself to the biggest names in my profession. If he, or anyone else, ever finds out that you’ve posed for me practically in the nude, or that you _kissed_ me, do you know what my career will be worth? Hell, do you know what my reputation will be worth? I’d be lucky to get a job painting the stripes on railway cars, much less a portrait that could hang in the National Gallery.”

By the time he’s done, her eyes are sparking with fury and her fists are clenched at her sides. 

“I’m so sorry to have inconvenienced your _career_ ,” she says through her teeth. “Since clearly that’s all that matters to you. Although I would think that you would’ve realised at some point during your little tirade that I am a lady, born and bred, and the idea that I would run around telling tales about this is absolutely beyond the pale. A lady would _never_ kiss someone and then broadcast the fact. Although I can hardly expect you to know that.”

Bright and blinding yellow pops behind his eyes. He doesn’t even stop to think that this will probably get him fired, just as surely as kissing her would have. He just opens his mouth and starts talking. 

“What did you just say to me?” he grits out, his voice shaking with the effort it takes not to yell at her. His Scots accent is stronger than ever. “Are you somehow implying that because I haven’t a _title_ I don’t know how to behave myself, like I’m some mangy Scottish _mongrel_ that got deposited on your goddamn doorstep? The bloody nerve of you.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and flounces over to the window, bending over to pick up her dressing gown. The fact that he can see every bit of her gorgeous body as she does so only infuriates him further. Dammit, she is so fucking beautiful, and he wants her so badly, and he can’t have her. Even wanting her would mean complete disaster for him, and he doesn’t know what to do with the rage and fear and simmering lust coursing through his body all at the same time. 

“Fine,” she says, doing up the side of her dressing gown swiftly. “Very well. I just thought that while you were here, you’d be fun to... well, you know, _seduce_. You’re handsome, and different, and —”

He cuts her off. 

“You were going to seduce me.”

She purses her lips and looks out the window. 

“Yes, of course. Does that shock your delicate sensibilities so badly, Mr. Moir?”

If he thought the yellow was bad before, it’s nothing compared to now. His whole field of vision is awash in it, so bright it hurts to see. 

“What in the absolute fucking _hell_ ,” he half-whispers, because if he doesn’t whisper he’s going to shout it so loudly they’ll hear him all the way down in the kitchens. “You didn’t. You fucking _didn’t_.”

“Mr. Moir, for God’s sake, your language is —”

“I don’t bloody care about my language!” He’s breathing hard through his nose now, fighting the blind rage that makes him want to scream and slam things about until he breaks something, has the satisfaction of hearing wood splintering and glass shards flying. “You were going to _use_ me. Bought and paid for, you thought, like some kind of... of... _gigolo_. What, was this part of the agreement with your father, then? That I was to service you in addition to painting you? Jesus fucking Christ, I canna…”

He trails off, aware that his Lowland Scots has become so thick that she probably is having trouble understanding him. He’s so angry he can barely stand it, but underneath the seething rage there’s a small kernel of hurt. He liked her, that’s the truth of it. He liked her, was well on his way to becoming infatuated with her, just from meeting her for two hours last week. He’d known, in his rational mind, that he had no chance of ever being anything to her but an employee, but he’d foolishly hoped that she’d liked him a little bit too. And now to find that she’d seen him as just a toy, a handsome lad, paid for like a prize stud... it feels humiliating. Demeaning, even. As though she’d never see him as anything more than the working-class Scots boy he’d grown up as. Certainly not her equal. Never that. 

“Scott... Mr. Moir... I…”

She looks utterly bewildered, as shocked as he’d been a few minutes ago. 

“Dinna say anything,” he says, suddenly weary down to the bone. “It doesna matter.”

“I wasn’t —”

He lifts a hand, and then suddenly pinches the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes tight shut. 

“I want you to listen to me!” she says sharply. “I most certainly was not assuming that you — that I — that is to say, I did not mean to imply that you —”

He opens his eyes, feeling sick and miserable and exhausted. 

“Please,” he says quietly. “Just... leave it be, eh? Please. I’ll... I’ll leave. I can say I was taken ill or something of the sort. And if you’re worried about the painting, it willna matter. I can work on the background at home, it’ll make no difference.”

She blinks, her fine, dark brows drawing together. 

“But I don’t want you to go without me resolving this,” she insists. There’s a mulish set to her mouth, and the way she’s set her shoulders seems to imply she’s in for the long haul. He just doesn’t have it in him, not right now. 

“You canna always get what you want, my lady,” he says simply, and then turns around and begins packing up his things. He’ll have to put turpentine to that floor to get the dried paint out from where he dropped his palette. He hopes like hell turpentine won’t ruin these floors. 

“Very well then,” she huffs. He doesn’t turn around, and after a moment he hears her stomping to the doorway, deliberately slamming her heels down on the polished floor to make as much noise as possible. When the door finally shuts behind her with an audible click, Scott heaves a sigh of relief. 

He wants out of here as soon as possible, away from colours he’s not used to and women who confuse and hurt him by equal measure. He wants to go home, drop off his things, and then occupy a corner booth with Chiddy and Eric and forget about his grand new job with as much beer as possible. 

God, and he’d thought this was his chance, his chance at everything.

What a fool he’d been. 

* * *

She slams out of the room, so angry she can barely see in front of her. She knows he’ll be coming out of the room soon, and God knows she doesn’t want to face him _again_ after all the horrible things he just said to her, so she slips into a small side parlor just off the landing. She closes the door behind her and leans back against it, breathing hard, fists clutched at her midriff. 

The goddamned _nerve_ of him. How _dare_ he raise his voice to her, how dare he _curse_ at her, and most of all, how dare he accuse her of _using_ him like some sort of stud horse? He is damned lucky, she fumes silently, to be allowed to see her like that. She has never once, in her entire life, let a man see all of her like she did today. She’s had her fair share of trysts in darkened corners and secluded side gardens, but she’s never been as... exposed as she was a few minutes ago. She’d picked him, a penniless, lower-class Scottish painter, for reasons she herself still doesn’t understand. At root, she supposes, she’d thought she could trust him. And instead, he threw that trust in her face, accused her of a number of truly vile things, and all but shoved her out the door. 

She’s so furious with him she could strangle him with her bare hands. 

The truly galling thing is that she can’t do anything about it. If she retaliates — writes to her father, for instance, complaining that Moir won’t do and asking for another painter instead — then she’ll play right into his paint-smeared little hands. If she gets revenge on him in any way at all, it will only prove his point — that Tessa is using him, and the second she didn’t get what she wanted, she turned on him like a striking snake. And she refuses to let him be right. 

As she begins to breathe a little easier, some of the rage dissipating the longer she stands and takes heavy breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth, the more she begins to feel a flicker of shame. Not for taking off her dressing gown and letting him see her in her sheer lingerie, but for the look on his face when she admitted she’d planned to seduce him. She doesn’t understand it still, but she could swear that there’d been a flicker of something that looked like... well, _hurt_. 

She cannot fathom why he’d feel hurt that a beautiful woman wanted to sleep with him, but the more she thinks about it, the more certain she becomes that’s what it was. She just doesn’t know what to do about it. Certainly this afternoon hasn’t gone anywhere close to the way she expected it would. She’d anticipated losing what was left of her virginity to this handsome young man with his dancing hazel eyes and broad, sensitive artist’s hands. She had _not_ anticipated lurking in an upstairs parlour, filled with uncertainty and the sickening dregs of fury, wondering what to do next. 

She breathes in and out again, deliberately, and goes on shaky legs to sit in a small, overstuffed chair in the corner of the room. She doesn’t want to think about how she feels right now, how small and devastated she is underneath all the anger. She’s been so careful, for years, hiding her indiscretions with practiced skill, making sure the partners she chose were skilled and sophisticated, but most of all, discreet. She’s kept a tight rein on her own desires for years, too, pulling back from ever giving herself fully to a man, even when her body ached for fulfillment, even when she had a man on his knees before her, _begging_ to be allowed entrance. She’d turned them all away, satisfied them other ways, satisfied _herself_ other ways, but she’d never given any man that final piece of herself. 

She knew what the risks were, but she’d become so desperate lately. Everything felt stifling, like her breath was constantly caught in her throat, like she was living some sort of half-existence, like nothing was entirely real anymore. Her mother had called it a decline and had insisted she go to a watering place in the spring. Her father had ignored it entirely, as was his wont. Eliza has been mixing up tonics and headache powders for months now. None of it seemed to help. Nothing at all made her feel alive or real anymore, nothing made her feel like any of her choices mattered. It wasn’t just boredom or ennui, it was as if her spirit, everything that made her herself, was flickering out. 

And then she’d met Scott Moir, and to her great surprise, everything within her that felt like it was guttering, slowly dying, had roared back to life again. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, not even to herself, but it was true. She doesn’t even know why it had to be _this_ man, instead of someone appropriate for her position, but nevertheless, it was him. She’d felt excited around him last week — and not only the excitement of arousal, but the excitement of being young and alive and capable of arousal. All week, she’s lived in anticipation of this moment, of giving herself over to him utterly, letting him possess her and in turn possessing him, letting herself commit one giant act of folly that would sear itself into her flesh so thoroughly that she couldn’t ever forget it or fully let it go. Someday, she had told herself, when she was old and grey and had lived the dull, respectable life expected of her, she’d look back on this moment with this man and remember the wild pulsing joy of being alive burning through her. 

She curls in on herself in the uncomfortable little chair, drawing her knees to her chest and laying her cheek against them. She feels almost wounded, hurt in a way she can’t fully explain. She had thought he’d understand, she supposes, that he would somehow see past her bravado and her practiced techniques of seduction and see how desperately she needed this. How much she wanted that moment of connection, how she craved the intimacy of that final touch that she’d allowed no one else. And he hadn’t. He’d been furious, accusatory, but he hadn’t taken a single second to understand why she would want him. He’d assumed immediately that she was merely using him, and that’s the thing that stings, worse than her wounded pride and the disappointment. He’d assumed that she was just another aristocratic woman, someone who saw him as a means to her own amusement, and he had never once bothered to even ask what her true reasons were. 

Her mouth tightens into a thin, straight line at the thought. Revenge is something she cannot have, but if he expects she will ever forgive him for this, he is sorely mistaken. She’ll sit for him next week, because her father will be expecting word on the painting and will no doubt write to Hargreave to determine whether sufficient progress is being made. But that does _not_ mean that Tessa has to be anything other than icily polite. She will stand where he asks, pose as he wishes, wear what he advises, but she will be damned to hell before she says one friendly word to him or gives him so much as a pleasant glance. She will freeze him to death in the most elegant and refined way possible. For the love of God, she has been to the most exclusive academies available to young women on the Continent and in England, she has been trained by the most exclusive and expensive governesses, and she has dined at Court with His Majesty the King. Scott Moir has _no_ idea what is about to happen to him. None. 

Resolved, she gets up slowly from her chair and goes to the parlour door. 

She can hardly wait for next Thursday. 

***

Unfortunately, the end of the week drags on and on. Friday is long and dull, with rain forcing Geraldine Moncton to cancel her garden party. Saturday, while not rainy, is miserably cold with a sharp wind, and Eliza comes down with the ague and cannot dress Tessa for the theatre. Meggy does her best, but Tessa arrives at the Delphi feeling distinctly frumpy and very unlike her usual self. 

After a late night at the theatre (and fending off the importunate advances of George, Viscount Sheldon) Tessa does not feel that she has the physical or mental fortitude required for Sunday services, and stays in with tea and toast. 

Monday dawns fair and bright, which bodes well for the boating expedition Tessa plans to attend at the behest of Lady Fitzgibbons. She is trying to decide if an all-white ensemble is too absurdly choir-girl or just the right touch of naughtily innocent when there’s a tap at the door. Meggy pokes her untidy fair head into the room, waggling an envelope between her fingers. 

“Begging your pardon, milady, but I just got this from the footman downstairs. It’s for you, milady, very urgent, he said.”

Tessa frowns at Meggy’s manners — honestly, why Mrs. Lauzon hasn’t gotten her into proper training yet is beyond everyone’s understanding — and goes over to take the slip of paper. Meggy, overwhelmed, bobs a nervous curtsy and promptly flees. 

Carrying the envelope over to the window, Tessa frowns at the back. Her name is inscribed in a messy scrawl, with what looks to be a pencil. She lifts the flap carefully and pulls out a single square of rough paper, folded into quarters. 

_Lady Tessa_ , it reads. _I apologise for my accusations the previous Thursday. They were unprofessional and unkind. I wanted you to be the first to know that it is my plan to wire the earl tomorrow and surrender my commission. I will, of course, return his investment thus far. Please accept my best wishes. Yours sincerely, Scott Moir._

She stands frozen by the window for a long moment, reading and re-reading his words. She can’t let him do this, she realises abruptly. She can’t let it go like this. It’s not about having the last word, it’s...she doesn’t know what it is. She doesn’t want to face what it is. All she knows is that she cannot let him walk out of her life like this and never see him again. 

Filled suddenly with a sharp, almost welcome sense of desperation, she hurries to her little escritoire and snatches up a monogrammed sheet of notepaper. She scribbles frantically, then rings the bell with indecent haste. 

Thankfully it is not Meggy who arrives, but one of the downstairs maids — Sarah, a much more sensible young woman. 

“Take this to the footman who brought the note addressed to me this morning,” Tessa orders, a bit breathless but not caring. “Meggy will know which one. Tell him that he’s to deliver it to this address and to go as fast as possible.”

Sarah takes the envelope and the little slip of paper with the address on it and sketches a quick curtsy. 

“Yes, m’lady,” she murmurs, and then she’s away. Tessa breathes out a long sigh of mingled relief and apprehension. 

It’s a gamble, a huge one, but she thinks it just might work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like an idea of the dress I had in mind for Tessa's peignoir, have a look [here](https://vintage-dress-closet.myshopify.com/products/christian-dior). I can assure you that the idea of fictional Tessa in this is quite enough to make anyone go weak in the knees. 
> 
> Also, if you happen to be Scottish and I have hopelessly mangled the dialect, I apologise most sincerely.


	5. sweetnesses of velvet depth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She smirks at him and reaches out to trail her fingertip along his face. His skin is so warm, smooth-shaven and silky under her touch. 
> 
> “I told you I was going to. But now you won’t even let me finish the seducing.”
> 
> (or, the chapter in which there's a change in rating)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Finally_ , we are here! It's smut time, people. I know you've been waiting with commendable patience. But it's time at last for our stubborn protagonists to get down to the business of ripping each other's clothes off and doing unspeakable things. Aren't we all relieved?
> 
> (In all seriousness, this chapter does earn its rating change, so if that's not your thing...fair warning.) 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your lovely comments, DMs, etc. I love seeing what you think of these characters I'm creating! And I particularly love that you see them as I am coming to know them - flawed, gorgeous, funny, difficult. Hearing your take on them makes me do a better job and helps me know if I'm on the right track, so...thank you, so very much. 
> 
> I know several of you were...shall we say, perturbed, at the slight cliffhanger at the end of the last chapter. I hope the unabashed smuttiness of this chapter makes up for it! Next chapter is even more illicit, so...many things to look forward to! (Really, I should've just named this "Fairwinds Writes Smut, Thinly Disguised as People Talking About Paintings.") 
> 
> The title for this one is also Neruda, aptly taken from his "Ode to a Naked Beauty." Neruda has _great_ chapter titles for smut, not going to lie.
>
>> Your body – from what substances  
> agate, quartz, ears of wheat,  
> did it flow, was it gathered,  
> rising like bread  
> in the warmth,  
> and signalling hills  
> silvered,  
> valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses  
> of velvet depth,  
> until the pure, fine, form of woman  
> thickened  
> and rested there?  
> 

She is so nervous by three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon that she can barely sit still, let alone calm her racing heart or dry her clammy hands. It’s infuriating, really — she has blithely spurned the advances of some of the most powerful men in England, and it’s a penniless Scottish painter who has her all tied up in knots. Finally she can’t take it anymore and pushes up out of her chair, pacing up and down the little sitting room. She’d instructed Hargreave to bring Scott Moir up to this tiny, out-of-the-way sitting room on the third floor so that she could have relative privacy, without the servants passing by every five minutes or so, but now she wonders if this was a mistake, if she wouldn’t rather relish a timely interruption or two. 

What if he refuses to listen to her? What if he insists on quitting and leaves and she never sees him again? What if…? She shakes her head fiercely, trying to clear it. None of this is doing her any good. All she can do is say what she means to say, and then it’s his decision. 

She’s on her fifth circuit of the room when there’s a circumspect tap at the door. After a moment’s wait, Hargreave himself opens the door with a rather flinty look in his eye. 

“Milady,” he says with the faintest tinge of disapproval in his voice, “Mr. Moir has arrived. Shall I show him in?”

“Yes, thank you.” She takes a shaky breath. “Have him brought up right away, please.”

“Milady.” 

Hargreave bows, somehow still managing to suggest that all of this is highly irregular, and then disappears. In a few moments, he returns. 

“Mr. Moir, milady,” he says, bows again, and steps aside. 

He’s here. Finally, he’s here, and Tessa’s nerves return in full force. She nearly feels sick with anxiety. She closes her eyes for just a moment and takes another deep breath, then opens them to find Scott standing in the doorway, looking at her.

He doesn’t look like he actively hates her, which she supposes is a good start. She tries to smile, but it’s difficult. Her lips don’t seem as if they want to cooperate, and her heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s shaking her ribs apart. 

“Mr. Moir,” she manages in a somewhat normal voice, and she gestures a bit too widely at the chairs positioned on either side of the tea table. “Won’t you have a seat?”

He nods and moves to sit down, and she notices almost absently that he looks unfairly handsome, if a little tired. All that dark brown hair is slightly mussed, and his cheeks are a bit pink — from the wind, she supposes. There’s a twist in her belly that has nothing to do with nerves as she takes her seat across from him. She remembers how he tastes, how he holds her when he kisses her, and God help her, she wants to feel that again. 

“I’ll ring for tea,” she says, pleased when she sounds calm and collected, and he nods again. 

“Tea would be grand, thanks.”

They sit in awkward silence as she presses the bell and one of the downstairs maids answers. Tessa notices the girl’s eyes slide over to Scott in blatant interest and tamps down the feeling of possessiveness that rises unbidden in her chest. 

“We’ll have tea in here, thank you,” she says firmly, and just barely refrains from glaring at the door as it shuts behind the maid’s neatly-aproned figure. 

Suddenly, the silence turns from awkward to absolutely oppressive, and she can’t bear it a moment longer. 

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, like a schoolgirl instead of the polished, sophisticated society woman she is. “I... I’m very sorry.”

He stares at her blankly. It’s not encouraging at all. 

“I mean, about last Thursday,” she says quickly. It still sounds very childish and silly, and she can feel her cheeks starting to heat. “I...ah...I didn’t think about how it would sound. To you. I didn’t think you would see it the way you did. And I’m sorry.”

He shifts on his chair, blinking quickly. 

“How did you think I would see it?” 

She coughs a little, not sure how to answer. “I suppose I thought that perhaps you’d be… interested, at least. I didn’t think you’d take it as an insult, that you would think I thought you owed it to me as payback for my father’s patronage.”

He shakes his head. “That was unfair. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She shrugs a little, remembering her old governess ordering her to never shrug, that it was unladylike. It’s also unladylike to have to apologise for propositioning the man hired to paint your portrait, she muses, so which is really the greater sin?

“I should have said it differently,” she says, her voice tight. “Or perhaps not at all. And I want you to know that I have no intention of mentioning it to anyone, ever. I am discreet, at least. I would never want to ruin your career.”

He’s scanning her face carefully, those hazel eyes wide as if to assess her truthfulness. She feels utterly frustrated, with the situation, with herself, with her sudden and inexplicable desire to make him see she is sincere about this apology. She doesn’t apologise to men often — to her lovers, never. This is completely out of character for her, and she feels as if he needs to know that in order to know she truly _means_ this. 

“It wasn’t just about my career,” he says in a low, strained voice. “It was… I wanted… I didn’t want it to be so impersonal, aye? Not just… you thought I was good-looking and available and you could have your way with me.”

She thinks about that for a moment, and her spine stiffens. He has _absolutely_ no right to imply that she frequently makes lascivious advances to any available man. 

“I am not in the habit of throwing myself at men who aren’t interested,” she says, sounding very haughty even to her own ears. “And I… apologise for assuming your interest. I assure you that, if you should choose to continue with the portrait, I will behave with extreme propriety from this point forward. And…” 

She looks down at her hands, unable to force out this next part while looking him in the eye. 

“I should very much like for you to continue, if you’re willing.”

She’s about to steel herself and look up, even though her insides are writhing with embarrassment and fury, when a tap comes at the door. She practically flies out of her chair. 

“That’s the tea,” she says unnecessarily, and the next few minutes are a flurry of getting the tea tray set before them and pouring out and asking inane little questions like _one lump or two?_ and _do you prefer cream, Mr. Moir?_ Once the maid is out of the room and they’re both settled, cups in hand, he looks directly at her for the first time since her painful apology. 

“Thank you,” he says in that blunt way he has, the one that jolts her a bit because it’s so unexpectedly direct. “For apologising. And for thinking of my career. You’re more honourable than I realised.”

She bristles a little at that, but chooses to take a sip of tea instead of snapping at him. After all, she hasn’t exactly come here today occupying the high ground. 

“And I… I need to be honest with you,” he says slowly, staring into his cup. The fine china looks so delicate in his broad fingers. “I came here today to turn down the commission. But after this… after what you said, I think I should do it. If you want me to.”

She bites her lip. She doesn’t know what to do with this unusual vulnerability she seems to feel when she’s around him, this willingness to not have control, but she can’t seem to help herself, it seems. 

“I do,” she says, more quietly than she intends to. “If you’re willing.”

He looks up, smiling a little. “I am,” he says. “And… as far as not returning your interest, I have something to show you. If I may.”

Her stomach drops. Dear God, this is humiliating. It’s one thing to apologise for trying to seduce him, but it’s another thing entirely to have him show her, in detail, why he doesn’t want her. 

“You needn’t —” she starts, but he’s already rummaging about in his leather case beside his chair. 

“I brought these, even though I thought I was going to say goodbye,” he says, a bit sheepishly. “I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I hope… well… that they’re not too much. If they are, I’m sorry.”

He holds out a stack of small, rectangular papers. She recognises the look of them — it’s the same paper he used to write her the note in which he told her he was resigning the commission. 

“Please,” he says, pushing them closer to her, and she takes them, utterly bewildered. 

The top slip of paper is a drawing of her with her peignoir on, the lines loose and flowing. It has a casual, unfinished quality to it, as if he’d just jotted down outlines without worrying overmuch about the details, but it’s still beautiful… the lines and curves of her body captured perfectly under the flowing chiffon. She gasps a little in appreciation. 

“This is lovely!” she says in delight, but he just shakes his head. 

“There are more.” Is she imagining it, or does he sound almost… afraid?

She can see why as she slides the first one off and places it on the little side table to her left. The next drawing is considerably more detailed — she can see her areolae distinctly beneath the sheer swirls of drapery, and the cleft between her thighs is dark, clearly delineated. She sucks in her breath again, this time more out of shock than delight. 

The next drawing involves no drapery at all. It’s just her back, fully nude, every detail of her posterior perfectly drawn, one knee bent so that there’s a hint of darkness shadowed in between her thighs. She remembers posing for him like this, and her face heats a little. She doesn’t regret him seeing her like this, but having it represented for her so baldly, in bold black strokes on heavy paper, is different. She feels… exposed, somehow, in a way she’s never felt before. 

He must see it in her face because he makes to take the drawings back, his expression panicked. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, “I’ll take them back, you don’t have to —”

“No!” she finds herself saying sharply. “No, I… I want to look.”

And, to her surprise, she does. The way he’s drawn her is beautiful, sensual, almost reverent. Even though this was clearly done with a pencil, hastily, even sloppily at times, there’s an inherent grace in his lines, his shading is quick and sure, and she finds herself eager to see what he chose to depict next. 

She shuffles through the entire pile of them — some of them different poses, ones she’s sure she doesn’t remember doing. One is simply of her sitting in the chair by the window, smiling at him with a lazy, smug smile. She likes that one particularly. It feels very true to herself, somehow. Several of them are close-ups — her face, straight-on, profile, turned almost completely away. One is of her breasts, which makes her blush and wonder exactly how he remembers her body _that_ well. There’s even one of her knee, crooked a little, which almost makes her giggle. It’s not exactly a sensual body part, but somehow he’s drawn it as if it is, as if that slight bend to her knee is an engraved invitation to move the eye upwards to that which cannot be seen. 

When she’s finished, she looks up to find him staring straight at her, pale, looking almost shaken. 

“If they’re too much…” he says, and swallows hard. “If they’re… I just wanted you to know. That I wasn’t… I’m not… uninterested.”

It takes her a few moments to parse the double negative and change in tenses, and then it zings straight through her. He wants her, too. It’s not one-sided, she didn’t just humiliate herself in front of him for no reason, and if she wants him, she can have him. 

She slides the rest of the drawings onto the end table and bites her lips together in triumph. 

“Oh, you’re not?” She’s pleased at how casual and blasé she sounds. He shifts in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. 

“No, I… that is, I mean, I am. Interested. If you still feel that…”

He trails off and looks at her beseechingly, as if begging her to read his mind and not make him finish his thought out loud. It’s absurdly adorable, that pleading look. 

“Are you worried that I might be so annoyed with you that I no longer wish to pose for you nearly nude?” she purrs, testing the waters to see exactly how far she can go. Her answer is in the slight slackening of the muscles around his mouth, the widening of his eyes. 

“I… a little.” 

She stands, relishing the triumph singing through her veins. She wasn’t wrong, after all. He _does_ desire her, has clearly been thinking about her since last Thursday, if all those drawings are any indication, and she can have him. She just has to go about it with much more finesse than she did before. It was her mistake, and she’s willing to admit it. As long as she can have what she wants in the long run. 

“But you raised such a fuss about me posing in that gown,” she murmurs, perching on the arm of his chair. He looks incredibly nervous to have her so close, but he doesn’t try to move away. 

“I…umm… I have a suggestion about that, actually,” he says, looking desperately relieved to have something to talk about that doesn’t involve his nude drawings of her and all that that implies. 

“Yes?” She decides to lean on his shoulder for balance. It’s a very muscular shoulder. He should be quite proud of it. 

“I… I think you could continue wearing the gown,” he says, with thinly disguised hope in his voice. She smirks. “But I would paint you with drapery instead…you know, a sort of Greco-Roman look, very classical. Fully opaque, of course.”

She takes a moment to digest the suggestion, pleased and a bit surprised by the cleverness of his idea. This way, she and her father both get what they want, and the earl never has to be a bit the wiser that his daughter posed practically in the nude. 

“I suppose that would do,” she concedes, and she can feel his body relax a little under her hand. “And do you have any objections to… other things?”

He tenses up again, on cue. 

“What sorts of… other things?”

She begins stroking his hair back with her fingertips, following a whim that’s plagued her since last week during those all-too-brief moments she’d been kissing him. It’s so soft and thick, his hair, the heavy waves sifting easily between her fingers. 

“Oh, things like this,” she says softly, never ceasing the gentle stroking. “I made a mistake before, assuming that you would be comfortable with any… advances. So now I want to be sure that I’m not overstepping. You understand.”

He gulps, audibly. 

“Oh. Well. Ah… yes. Yes, that’s… what you’re doing. That’s all right.”

She nods solemnly, noting that the tips of his ears have begun to turn pink. God, but this is _delightful_. 

“And maybe this?” 

She starts tracing the whorls of his ear, delicately, her thumb rubbing at the lobe. He shivers. 

“Yes.” It comes out a bit strangled, and she can barely resist wriggling in satisfaction. 

“This isn’t a terribly comfortable position,” she says in an exaggeratedly dejected tone. “Do you suppose you could share for a moment?”

“Share?” 

She swings off the arm of the chair and deposits herself neatly on his lap, looking up into his dumbstruck face. 

“Is this all right with you? I’ll move if it isn’t.”

She’s giving him the out, but she doesn’t think he’ll need it. Both his hands come up to clutch at her, one at her waist, the other around her upper arm. 

“No,” he breathes out. His pupils are already dilated, and she hasn’t even kissed him yet. She damned well loves this. “Don’t move. Stay…stay here.”

“Very well,” she agrees. She shifts a bit on his lap to get comfortable, and he closes his eyes and makes a noise, like a groan but caught deep in his chest. She shifts again, experimentally, and his hands clamp down firmly to keep her still. 

“Tess — I mean, Lady Tessa. Please. Don’t move.”

She reaches up to cup his face in one hand. His skin is fever-hot, flushed, and his eyes are a bit glassy. This is the look of a man driven to desperation, the look of a man who can’t bear to be tormented by his lust one moment longer. It looks so good on him, this anguished desire. 

“I want you to call me Tessa,” she instructs softly. “I can’t do what I’m about to do if you insist on calling me by my title.”

His eyes half-close and his mouth falls open a little. She brushes his lower lip with her thumb, relishing the incredibly softness of his mouth.

“What are you going to do?” 

“This,” she whispers, and pulls his head down to her. It’s gentle this time, the kiss, not the blazing frenetic thing it was last Thursday, but she’s all right with that. He needs to be eased into it, the idea that he can have her and it won’t cost him, the idea that he is safe with her. So she kisses him lightly, easily, and lets him go after only a few moments. 

He looks utterly dazed. 

“Tessa,” he croaks, his voice ragged, and she presses her thighs together under her dress. The way he says her name, no title, no formal address, just her name in that voice, makes her go swollen and achy, makes her _want_. 

“Yes?”

“Do that again. Please do that again,” he murmurs, still in that broken voice, and she eagerly complies. She kisses him longer this time, biting, unhurried kisses, and when she slips her tongue into his mouth, he finally loses what little grip he had left on his composure. He groans into her mouth, loud and feverish, and he tugs mindlessly at her legs under the thick mass of skirts and petticoats until she finally grasps what he wants her to do. Breathing hard against the restricting laces of her corset, she straddles him, rucking up her skirts in front of her so she can feel him through the thin material of her pantaloons. 

“Tessa, _God_ , Tessa, please, oh God, you feel so amazing, it's so _hot_ , how are you so hot,” he babbles, and she lets herself giggle silently, not mocking him, just delighted by his unbridled enthusiasm, how wonderfully vocal he is. 

“You can touch me,” she murmurs, and then she remembers the door. “Actually, wait just a moment, I have to do something.”

She scrambles off him to securely bolt the sitting room door, and when she turns, he’s still sprawled in the little overstuffed armchair, legs slightly apart, his erection clearly showing through the fabric of his trousers, his expression utterly dazed. 

“Tessa?” he whispers, and suddenly she’s had enough waiting. She strides over to him with purpose, the heels of her chic little slippers digging into the Aubusson rug. 

“Undo me,” she orders, then adds, “please,” as a concession to her new incarnation as a thoughtful person who considers his wishes sometimes. 

“Undo you?”

“My buttons,” she says, spinning around and waiting for him to start on the long row of tiny buttons that go all the way down her back.

“Here?” The question sounds vaguely terrified, and she sighs a little. As if she hadn’t already taken precautions on the off chance this would happen. 

“Yes, here, Scott. I’ve locked the door, we’re on the third floor and no one can see in that window, and the staff are under strict instructions not to disturb me when I’m with guests. Unless you really don’t care to?”

She peers over her shoulder at him, suddenly thinking that perhaps he really _isn’t_ comfortable taking off her clothes in this house, that perhaps she’s gone a bridge too far yet again. He seems to be contemplating her latest statement, though, so she gives him a moment. Finally he sits up straight. 

“I care to,” he says firmly, and she beams at him. “But these are very, very small.”

She faces front again, pleased that he’s willing to go this far. “You have an artist’s delicate touch, I’m sure you can manage,” she says flippantly, and she hears him snicker before he stands up to get to his task. It’s oddly intimate, having him stand so close to her yet not touching her, his breath stirring the tiny wisps of hair that have escaped her coiffure and lie against the back of her neck. His fingers are a bit clumsy on the first few buttons, but by the fifth or sixth, they’re sure and no longer fumbling. He makes his way steadily down the row, his fingers occasionally skimming her chemise or even bare skin, and she feels anticipation growing in her stomach. He’s already seen her in less than her underthings, God knows, but nevertheless, she feels almost nervous. She wants him to want her as badly as he did last week, and she wants it to end better this time around. 

By the time he’s down to the buttons that cover her posterior, he’s starting to breathe harder, little gusts of warm air against the skin of her back. Finally he’s done, gently peeling the halves of her dress down over her shoulders. She holds up her wrists in response. 

“These too,” she says, and he comes around her to work on the buttons of her cuffs. 

“So many buttons,” he murmurs, intent on his work. She takes in his bent head, the heavy waves of hair falling over his forehead. “None of my clothes have this many buttons.”

“None of your clothes were designed so that they had to be put on by a maid,” she retorts. He looks up and smiles a little, and it strikes her how odd it is that she’s having a perfectly normal conversation with him right before he does unspeakably filthy things to her (she hopes). 

“It’s so impractical,” he says, starting on the other cuff. She rolls her eyes a bit, even though that isn’t ladylike either. 

“It’s not supposed to be practical,” she points out. “It’s supposed to prove that one can afford to have servants.”

He makes a very Scottish _hrrumph_ sort of noise in his throat. 

“Very impractical, it is,” he mutters, and finishes the button. “Now, then.” 

Slowly, he peels the dress off her as if it’s two giant flower petals and she, in her white chemise and corset and petticoats, is the stamen. The soft seafoam silk billows to the floor, and she smiles up at him from its drifts. 

“What do you think?” 

He slides both hands over her upper arms, over her collarbone, up her neck until they frame her face. 

“I think you’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says, soft but precise, his accent deepening his vowels and clipping off his consonants. He bends his head to kiss her, and she sways into him, craving the feel of his clothes against the bare skin of her chest and arms. 

He stops after a moment, though, his hands sliding down to explore the ridges of her corset. 

“Jesus, but this thing is like a prison,” he says in dismay, poking at one of the stays with a fingertip. “How on earth d’you breathe in it, hmm?”

“Very carefully,” she says drily. “Unlace me, will you?”

His eyes go wide again at this, but he gently spins her around by the hips and starts tugging at her laces, loosening the corset bit by bit until she can shimmy it down over her hips. 

“Oh,” he says when she turns around again, her breasts clearly visible through the fine, thin lawn of her chemise. “God, how I dreamed about you like this.”

She flashes him a quick grin. “Like this, or naked?” 

He groans. “Both. Dinna torment me, you devil-woman. How d’you get these things off?”

He tugs fruitlessly at her petticoats until she takes pity on him and unties the tapes, and then she’s standing before him in absolutely nothing but her slippers and chemise and drawers. 

“Now, then,” she says, enjoying his silent appraisal of her body, “why don’t you sit back down and we’ll go back to what we started a moment ago, hmm?”

He seems all too eager to comply, sinking back down onto the chair with alacrity. She straddles him and eases herself down onto his lap, and she is not disappointed by the choked noise he makes, the way his hands rise to clasp her ribcage, his thumbs brushing the undercurve of her breasts. 

“You’re so tiny,” he whispers. “I could span your waist with my two hands.”

She bites back a smile. He can’t, of course, certainly not with her corset off, but she doesn’t mind hearing him say it. She’s irrationally proud of her small waist, she cannot lie. 

“Touch me,” she says softly, and shrugs the strap of her chemise off one shoulder. His eyes are huge, but he follows her lead, slowly tugging the fine lawn down until the slope of her breast is exposed. He pauses as the hem reaches the peak of her nipple. 

“It’s all right,” she murmurs, carding her fingers through his hair. “Go on.”

When he still balks, she leans down and presses her lips to his jaw, trailing kisses over the sharp line of bone until she reaches the corner of his mouth. He’s panting under her, his whole body strung tight. 

“Go on,” she says again, and this time he obeys, tugging the delicate material down so that her entire breast is free. 

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters between his teeth. “You…you’re perfect.”

She does smile at that, quick and bright. 

“Don’t stop now.”

Slowly, carefully, he slides the other strap down and lets the chemise puddle around her waist. The air in the room feels chilly on her bare skin, but she likes it. 

“So soft,” he says quietly as his hands come up to cup her, his thumbs skimming over her nipples. His hands are a little calloused — not enough to hurt, but they scrape against her skin in a novel and exciting way. She’s never been touched by a man with callouses before, and it sends her nerves tingling. 

He goes silent as he plays with her, plucking gently at her nipples, rolling them between his fingers, and then he begins to flick them very lightly back and forth. She gasps. He couldn’t have known, but that’s what she likes best. His eyes fly up to check that she’s all right, that she still wants this, and she nods. He pauses for a moment, sets his jaw, and seems to decide something. Then, he bends and puts his mouth on her. 

It’s absolute heaven. Warm and wet, and he’s using that clever tongue of his to tease her in the best of ways. When he scrapes his teeth gently over her, she actually moans, and then flushes down to her navel. God knows she’s no blushing virgin, but this man, with his hesitance and his soft eyes and his prickly independence, is bringing something out in her that she’s never quite felt before, and it’s all a bit overwhelming. 

After a few moments, she opens her eyes and realises that, as wonderful as his mouth feels, the angle must be absolute hell on his neck, so she nudges at his shoulder. He lifts his head, looking wary. 

“Did I —”

“You’re incredible,” she says frankly, and now it’s his turn to blush. “But this will be much easier if we change positions a bit.”

He nods, and she swings herself around on his lap, letting her legs drape over the arm of the chair and leaning back into the crook of his arm. 

“Like this.”

He doesn’t need further encouragement, and within seconds she’s squirming on his lap, fighting the urge to slide her hand down the front of her drawers and move herself along. She’s wet already, wet and swollen, and she wants fingers in her, _now_. She doesn’t particularly care if they are hers or his, but she thinks hazily that if she rushes him, he may stop altogether. 

“Scott,” she says on the tail end of a whimper, “Scott, touch me. Please.”

He moves his mouth up to nibble at her collarbone. 

“I am touching you.”

“Elsewhere.” 

The hand not occupied with holding her up has been wrapped around her waist. Now, he shifts it under the hem of her chemise, just above the tapes of her drawers. 

“Here?”

She shakes her head, vehemently, and he chuckles. The sly bastard, he’s _teasing_ her. 

“You know where.”

He raises his head a little, and she can see he’s fighting a grin. 

“I’m a simple man, Tessa,” he says with a great deal of faux humility. “I’m afraid I will need verra specific directions.”

She grits her teeth and glares at him; he adopts an innocent expression that would not fool a child. When he refuses to move, she goes with her earlier idea and grabs his hand with hers, shoving it past the loose ties of her drawers, down over her abdomen. 

“Here,” she says breathlessly, and cups his hand around her core. She’s hot, drenched already, and he has to feel it. Here is proof positive of how much she wants him, impossible to deny, impossible to hide. 

“God,” he moans brokenly, his eyes half-closed. “You’re so… Tessa, dear Jesus, I…”

Then he seems to lose his words as her hand falls to the side and his fingers skim through her wetness, tracing her folds with a delicacy she had not quite expected from him. 

“You’re going to ruin me, you know that,” he says absently, as if it’s just a statement of fact. His thumb finds the sensitive nub right above her cleft and he presses in, immediately backing off when she goes rigid in his lap. 

“Too much?” he asks softly, and she shakes her head. 

“No, no, it was good, just… little circles. Here.” She moves her thumb over his, shows him exactly how she wants it, firm pressure on the hood of her clitoris, tight circles that make her hips arch up to meet him. 

After a moment or two, he stops and slides his middle finger down, over silky-slick flesh, to find her opening. She can’t help herself — she throws her head back over his arm and brings her free hand up to muffle her own mouth. He seems to take this as wholehearted encouragement, because the next thing she knows he’s slicked up another finger and is sliding two inside her, crooking his wrist to twist them a little. 

“Oh _God_ ,” she says into her wrist. “Oh sweet God. Do that… do that again.”

He does, twisting until he finds a spot inside her that makes her spread her legs wide and buck her hips urgently into his hand. 

“Oh please oh please oh please,” she chants, clutching at his shoulder and trying to keep herself quiet in the fabric of his sleeve. “Use your thumb, _God_ , please, just help me…”

She feels his moan reverberate through his chest, against her side, as he wriggles his hand to get the right angle, and then his thumb is back at her clit, his fingers twisting inside her insistently, over and over again. He’s relentless with that thumb, pushing her and pushing her, his big hand cupping her tightly, and she only lasts for a few more twisting thrusts before she comes, clamping down around his fingers. It’s rich and strong and sweet, the feeling of euphoria rising in her veins even before he slows down, those last tiny flutters of her walls beating around his fingers like birds’ wings. She gasps for air, her eyes screwed tight shut, and her throat is dry from the way she’s been panting, from the full-throated cries she’s forced herself to hold back. 

When she finally goes still, he slowly draws his fingers out and looks down at her, splayed half-naked across his lap, her body still flushed and damp from the orgasm he just drew out of her, her legs splayed obscenely wide. 

“Oh my _God_ ,” she says when she thinks she can form actual words again. “You know, for a man who was so shy about kissing me, you’re _very_ good with your hands.”

He grins, then bites his lip. 

“I am not shy,” he says hoarsely, sounding almost as wrecked as she does. “And wait until you see what I can do with my mouth.”

Her eyebrows fly up, and then, more out of shock than anything else, she starts to laugh. 

“You continue to surprise me, Scott Moir,” she says, and then tries to sit up. Most of her muscles still seem to think they ought to behave like jelly, but he helps her with the arm behind her shoulders, and she manages to perch upright on his lap again. She can feel his erection prodding insistently at her rear, begging for attention, but she hasn’t time to think of that yet. First, she needs to get her breath back. And get something to drink. 

He reaches into the pocket of his trousers and tugs out his handkerchief, then cleans off his fingers. She appreciates his attention to detail, since she doesn’t particularly like to be touched with cold, half-dried come on someone’s fingers. She shifts a bit on his lap to reach for her teacup, and he makes a little involuntary noise. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll get around to you in a moment,” she says, sipping thirstily. God, but her mouth is like the Sahara. “After I can breathe normally again.”

“Absolutely not,” he says firmly, and gently shoves her closer to his knees, away from the ridge in his trousers. “I am not letting you do…anything…about that. Not here.”

She gives him a frosty look over the rim of her teacup. 

“Scott,” she says calmly. “I am sitting here barely dressed. On your lap. Where you just brought me to a rather explosive climax. Are you really saying that you have serious ethical objections to me returning the favour?”

He turns red, the high planes of his cheekbones and the tips of his ears heating. 

“That is exactly what I’m saying. It’s one thing for me to…debauch you in an armchair in this very nice sitting room, but it’s another entirely for me to let you…well, to let you…do anything. Here.”

She sets her cup down on the little end table. 

“Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a double standard?”

He looks faintly guilty, but holds his ground. 

“Be that as it may, I’m not letting you.”

Well, that is just silly, she decides. She straddles him again, very well aware that nothing but a thin layer of lawn and his trousers are between him and the heat between her thighs. 

“Are you sure about that?” She shifts a little until his erection is lined up right where she wants it. “It would be so easy, you know. Just rip these down the seam and undo your trousers and —”

She stops and assesses the result she’s having on him. He’s turned a gorgeous pink colour and seems to be having trouble breathing, so she’s rather pleased. 

“Or…” she leans in close to his ear, letting her breath fan the sensitive skin there, “I could get on my knees and undo your buttons for you and kiss all the way up your thighs until I wrapped my mouth around your —”

She stops talking abruptly because he’s buried a hand in her elaborate coiffure and yanked her mouth to his. He kisses her like a desperate man, hard, insistent, his tongue searching her mouth even as his hips shift beneath her. She happily takes this as encouragement and drops her weight on him, rubbing herself against his arousal. The fastenings of his trousers are almost too much against her overstimulated skin, but she firmly ignores the faint prickling of discomfort. The way he rises up to meet her feels too damn good to stop. 

“Tessa, no, no,” he manages against her mouth, holding himself still by what seems a feat of sheer willpower. “You can’t…I can’t hold out like this. Please, stop.”

She sits back a little and pouts, openly. 

“But why?”

He tips his head back against the armchair, breathing hard. His face is red with exertion and pent-up desire, his eyes tight shut, his lips pressed together hard like he’s in pain. Curious to see just how far she can push him, she reaches down to lightly stroke him, and he snatches her hand out of the way without even cracking one eye open. 

“No.”

She huffs and wriggles her fingers, but he won’t let go. 

“Why not? I want to, and you clearly want to.”

He opens his eyes a little, just the barest slit showing. 

“Because I have already done enough wicked things for one day, that’s why.”

She bites her lips together so she won’t laugh out loud at him. 

“Wicked?”

He opens his eyes a bit farther. 

“Yes, wicked. You should know. I came in here innocent as a lamb, ready to apologise and leave wi’ my virtue intact, and you _seduced_ me. Just as you planned to all along.”

She smirks at him and reaches out to trail her fingertip along his face. His skin is so warm, smooth-shaven and silky under her touch. 

“I told you I was going to. But now you won’t even let me finish the seducing.”

He sighs and leans his head forward, letting go of her captured hand in favour of cupping her face. 

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met,” he tells her, very seriously. “And it is nearly beyond me to refuse you anything.”

She preens, even as he reaches down to slide her chemise back up, gently putting her arms through the holes and tying the ribbon about her neck with a little frown of concentration on his face. 

“But?” she prompts. 

“But,” he says, sliding his thumb over her collarbone, “you deserve better than a quick fuck in an armchair, Tessa. I won’t have that be the first time between us.”

She ponders that for a moment. Yes, it’s a bit annoying, his overly chivalrous insistence that the circumstances be perfect when quite obviously she doesn’t mind the armchair idea one bit. However, the general direction of his remarks seems quite… encouraging. 

“So you do want there to be a first time, then?” 

He draws in a quick breath and meets her eyes. He looks so sincere, so painfully _sweet_ like this, like a fairytale prince out of a storybook, and she has to steel herself against the sudden urge she has to melt against him and let him just sweep her away. 

“Yes, I want there to be a first time. Just… done properly, aye?”

He’s getting progressively more Scottish, she notes in some very abstract, logical corner of her brain. Getting aroused and getting emotional seem to bring his accent out in full force. She thinks with some amusement that if she can ever get him to let her make him come, he’ll probably burst out in a wild string of unintelligible Gaelic and then she’ll know she’s really broken him. 

“Define done properly,” she says, recalling herself to the matter at hand. He pauses for a moment, pondering. “And do not say candles. Or flowers. I do not need candles or flowers, thank you.”

He smiles a little at that, a wry twist like he knows he ought to be shocked but he already realises it’s her and therefore should not be all that shocking. 

“Verra well, I’ll forget about the candles,” he says drily. “I’m keeping the flowers. I wouldn’t mind seeing you laid out naked on a bed of petals someday.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “And still more surprises,” she says, dropping a quick kiss to his cheek as a reward. “I think I’d rather like to be painted like that.”

“Absolutely not,” he says coolly. “But if I cannae have flowers, or candles, then at least a bed. And privacy. Not having to wonder if some serving maid has her ear to the keyhole, listening.”

Tessa sits up straight in outrage. “They wouldn’t dare!”

“I’m not saying they are now, just... I do not want to have to think about it.”

She huffs out an irritated breath, but gives in. He does have a point — she’d like to be able to be as loud as she likes, and listen to him be as loud as _he_ likes, without worrying about eavesdroppers. 

“So how exactly do you plan on finding a bed, and privacy?” she demands. She has several ideas already, but this was his asinine notion and he can damned well come up with a solution to the problem. 

“I’ll think on it,” he says, a mischievous little quirk to his mouth, and she resists the overwhelming urge to smack him. Then he lifts a hand to her hair, smoothing a flyaway, she imagines, and his whole face softens. Something tugs at her chest, something she hasn’t let herself feel for years now. 

“So pretty,” he murmurs, stroking her hair reverently. “Such a pretty rose.”

She tilts her head a little, puzzled. She’s had men compare her to a flower before — one polo player, she remembers, raved about how her skin was “more flawless and pale than a camellia blossom” — but she can’t ever remember a man _referring_ to her as a flower. Perhaps it’s a Scottish thing, she thinks — after all, wasn’t it Herrick or Burns who had that lovely little poem about _gather ye rosebuds while ye may_?

Just then, while his eyes are still hazy and his face so open and sweet, there comes a tap at the door, and he jolts so strongly that she is nearly deposited on the floor. She barely manages to save herself by snatching hard at his shirt. 

“Milady?” a voice calls hesitantly. “Milady, I was just comin’ to see if I was to take the tea things away. Mr. Hargreave said…”

The voice trails off, and Tessa knows _exactly_ what is going on. Hargreave may have no proof she’s misbehaving in the third-floor sitting room, but he is bound and determined to remind her that he knows everything that happens in this house, and that he _will_ hold her accountable if he finds the slightest shred of evidence she has been up to no good. 

She sighs and thinks idly of ways to get Hargreave to be let go without a character. 

“Leave them,” she says with the sharp ring of authority in her voice. “I’m in the midst of a conversation, and I do not wish to be disturbed.”

The voice is very cowed when it replies. 

“Yes, milady, I… I’ll wait till you ring.”

Tessa exhales through her nose and presses her lips together. Damn Hargreave and his devotion to her father’s ideals of propriety and good behaviour. This is her house too, for God’s sake, and she will be damned to hell and back before she lets herself be pushed about like this. 

When she looks back at Scott, though, thoughts of revenge fly straight out of her head. He looks petrified, like his worst fears are coming true, and for once Tessa doesn’t think about all the angles of the situation, doesn’t work out how to get what she wants. She just wants to comfort him. 

“No, no, look at me,” she says softly, taking his face gently in her hand and stroking her thumb over the apple of his cheek. “It’s all right. There’s no way she could have known. Scott, it’s all right.”

He doesn’t look like this reassurance worked at all. 

“Scott,” she says, kissing him softly, “I won’t let your reputation be ruined, I promise.”

He gives her a faint smile. 

“You’re not supposed to be protecting me, you know,” he says. It’s not bitter, as she expected… more as if he cannot understand how he’s ended up in this situation. 

She lets go of his face to hold onto his shoulders. She’s still sitting astride his lap, and she doesn’t need to be for this conversation, so she turns herself sideways, relieved when he keeps his arms around her even though he still looks ill at ease. 

“I know that this is not… usual, for you,” she begins, carefully. She doesn’t want to damage his sense of pride, but he has to understand how this is going to work for them, if it is to work at all. “And ordinarily, on the street or in a public place, you’d be the one protecting me. I know that. But here, in my world… you have to let me take care of things for you sometimes. Take care of things for us, really. Not because you’re anything less, just because…”

She runs out of words and looks at him, at a loss. He sighs, but to her great relief he doesn’t seem angry or resentful. 

“It’s not my world,” he says heavily. “I knew that when I came here today, when I let myself kiss you. If we’re to do this, it won’t always be on my terms.”

He sounds defeated, almost, and she feels herself softening towards him. She hardly ever feels this sort of desire to protect the men she’s with, this strange need to comfort them, and it disconcerts her. 

“It doesn’t always have to be my world,” she says, giving him an out. “Just… right now, it is. So let me do this my way.” 

He sighs again and then, to her surprise, draws her into his chest until her head is resting on his shoulder. 

“Verra well,” he says slowly. “If that’s the way it must be. By all rights, I should be walking out that door right now, but I can’t. So we’ll do as you wish.”

She lifts her head, a bit annoyed. 

“You can’t leave or you won’t?”

He smiles at her, a true smile this time, and slides his hands over her shoulders, up to her neck and her jawline, a warm weight against her skin. He tilts her head down and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. 

“Both,” he says with finality. “Now. We must get you dressed so that when the girl comes back for the tea things she won’t be scandalised, hmm?”

She lets him dress her, putting back on all the layers he’d so eagerly stripped away, regretting the loss of his fingers on her bare skin. He does well enough until he gets to the strings of her corset, and then he’s far too gentle. 

“You have to actually _pull_ them,” she informs him, holding onto the back of the armchair for stability.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Tessa!” he insists, and she sighs dramatically. 

“You won’t hurt me, Eliza does it every single day,” she snaps. “Pull harder.”

It takes him three tries, wincing all the while, but he finally gets them tight enough. When she turns around to recover her dress, his face is horrified. 

“What is that contraption doing to your insides?” he demands. She rolls her eyes at him. 

“Probably rearranging them all,” she says, and bends down to tug her dress up around her waist. “All right, do up my buttons, please.”

He mutters the entire time he’s working on her buttons about how dangerous it is for her to be forcibly trapped inside a cage that is going to ruin all her internal organs. She cheerfully ignores him. 

When he finally gets all the buttons of her dress sorted out, she turns around and places both hands on his chest. 

“I don’t know how I’ll wait until Thursday to touch you again,” she says frankly, and he colours and then looks pleased. 

“I was going to say that,” he mutters, and she laughs and kisses his throat where his shirt gaps open. 

“Don’t ever start wearing ties like a civilised human being,” she says, humming against his skin until he makes a helpless noise of desire. “I love this on you.”

“You’ll turn my head with all this,” he says severely, and steps away from her to retrieve his coat. He puts it on with quick, deft movements, and she watches him with undisguised hunger. “I already could not sleep because of you, nor eat properly, and now I won’t be able to do anything at all. You’ll ruin me.”

She smirks outright at that, because she’s had men claim she drove them mad with lust, but never has anyone been so simple and forthright about the effect she has on him. 

“I rather like the idea of ruining you,” she whispers, taking his hand and drawing it to her waist. “I want you to think of me all evening, and all day tomorrow, and until Thursday afternoon. I want you to think of how I taste, and the way it feels when you cup my breasts, and —”

He cuts her off with his mouth, again. She doesn’t usually like being interrupted, but she thinks this method may be acceptable. When he has kissed her thoroughly, he finishes with a nip to her bottom lip and pulls away. 

“Enough wi’ that sort of talk,” he admonishes, “or I’ll have to walk away from here wi’ my case held in before my front to avoid embarrassing myself.”

She smiles at him brightly. 

“I’ll behave nicely,” she promises him. “At least until Thursday. Now,” she glances at the little clock in its crystal setting on a table against the wall, “I have a supper this evening, and I have to go bathe and get dressed and so on. And while I would love nothing more than to torment you in the bath…” 

He groans appreciatively. 

“...while I would love nothing more, you should probably go before I get you in trouble. Don’t be late on Thursday.”

He bobs his head and leans in, kissing her cheek in a remarkably chaste, old-fashioned caress. 

“I will think of you every waking moment,” he murmurs, and before she has a chance to point out that he really does belong in a Jane Austen novel, he’s striding to the door and unlocking it, walking out without a single backward glance. 

“Good Lord,” she murmurs to herself, looking around the room. It’s only been an hour and a half, and somehow he’s managed to worm his way past half her defenses. She doesn’t know what to _do_ with him, this Scottish boy (because he may be 25 but he’s a boy still in all the ways that count). He bewilders her with his mercurial changes, how quickly he shifts from a passionate lover who gave her one of the best first orgasms she’s ever had to a somewhat prim gentleman who insists that this affair be conducted upon lines of romantic propriety, of sorts. She doesn’t know what to do with him, and he confuses her, and by all rights she should just let him go, but somehow she doesn’t want to. There’s still a feeling in her chest, in her throat, something honey-sweet and molten that she wants to cling to. Almost as if she can believe in him, trust him, even. She doesn’t trust men, not ever, but there’s a part of her that wants to trust him. 

Turning, she sees the stack of drawings on the end table and quickly snatches them up. There aren’t pockets on her dress, damn it all, and she doesn’t have much time before the maid appears, so she does the only thing she can think of — she hikes up her skirt and shoves them under her chemise and corset, trapped next to her skin. They’ll be safe there until she can have a moment alone in her bedroom. She certainly doesn’t want anyone in the household seeing them, but she is also rather glad he left them behind. She wants to study them again, alone, at her leisure, wants to touch herself and think of him drawing her naked, drawing from memory her breasts and posterior and the dark curls between her legs. She wants to imagine him drawing all of it live, too. She wants to give him parts of herself that she always keeps tucked away inside herself, wants to be open with him, wants him to see her as she is. 

She shakes her head firmly to rid herself of these absurd fancies and presses the bell for the maid to come back for the tea service. It’s only a day and a half until she sees him again, and she’s quite sure that all these ridiculous notions will be firmly squashed at that point. She’ll convince him to let her fuck him in some inappropriate location, she’ll get all of this out of her system, and things will go back to normal. 

In the meantime, she has a supper to attend and a gown to choose and absolutely no time to think of hazel eyes going soft and slightly calloused hands, reverent and so very gentle on her body, in her hair. No time at all. 


End file.
